Xylophones, Times Tables and a Journey to Jo’burg

Miss Steven • June 6, 2025

Xylophones, Times Tables and a Journey to Jo’burg

Miss Steven • June 6, 2025

A week of music, maths and meaningful reading

This Week in Ellen MacArthur Class:
  • We started reading Journey to Jo’burg and made predictions using the cover and blurb
  • Practised times tables daily in preparation for the multiplication check
  • Challenged Miss Steven to Rock Stars battles – and we’re winning!
  • Explored seasonality in Design and Technology, linking it to climate and availability
  • Played xylophone chords and began learning a full song in music class

This week has been full of exciting learning in Ellen MacArthur class.


We have started to read ‘Journey to Jo’burg’ by Beverley Naidoo and are delving into predicting what is going to happen in the book. We have used the blurb and front cover to help us make our predictions and are looking forward to reading on and seeing what happens next!


Every day this week have been practicing our times tables ahead of the Multiplication check coming up. We are getting super speedy and Miss Steven has

enjoyed trying to race us now she has her own Times Tables Rock Stars account – we are definitely winning at the moment! The children have been so resilient in tackling the tricky tables and giving it their best go every time; it isn’t easy but they’re showing our value of endurance by keeping going even when it gets tough.


When we’re not doing our times tables, we have enjoyed being creative. In design and technology, we are focussing seasonality. We have explored what seasonality means and looked at a calendar showing which fruits are available during which seasons. We then made good links to our previous knowledge of seasons and climate to explain why we can’t get every fruit all year round.


Music has been good fun this week too; we have been learning to play chords on the xylophone and are building up to playing and singing a whole sing together!

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