Welcome back! As always we have an engaging and very full term ahead!
 

We started swimming this week, which was very exciting. Many children commented that they had surprised themselves with how well they had done, and nervous children agreed it actually was not scary after all!

We also began the term with a very exciting Speeches Week!

The children were emotionally engaged by the idea of 'save the rainforest', especially after research showed how severe a problem deforestation is. We identified the features of a speech, and had fun collecting emotive vocabulary. Then it was time to put all this work together to form a short speech - we were only allowed bullet point notes when presenting. A speech must be delivered, not read out! We were all nervous, but everyone managed to speak in front of an audience! Our oracy and confidence have improved noticeably over the week. 

Wednesday 5th January
RE

In RE we explored the salvation story, first matching artworks to parts of the story, then acting out sections to help empathise with the characters involved.

Friday 7th January

Science

Our focus this term is materials and their properties. Today we tested the magnetism, hardness, flexibility, permeability and transparency of a range of materials. Following this we were able to discuss the suitability of different materials for various uses. 

Friday 14th January

First aid

We were excited to learn about first aid, which none of us have done before. We discussed scenarios and how to manage in different situations. We then put our new CPR skills to work by practicing on the dummies. We all know the most helpful responses to burns, cuts and bumps as well. 

Wednesday 26th January 

Tour of Boston

We love a trip out, and we’re very excited to find out more about buildings we walk past frequently and have never taken enough notice of! We met Jane, our wonderful guide, by Fydell Hall, and she began by telling us about Gysor’s hall, which used to be a warehouse and has now been turned into flats, opposite the hall. She told us stories about many of the ancient buildings, some of the most impressive were from the 13th century, a time when Boston was the most wealthy town in England (second only to London). Everyone learned something they hadn’t known before, so it was a very successful trip. To hear so many children declaring they would now ask their parents to take them into some of the places we visited was the icing on the cake.

Thursday 27th January 

Science investigations

We tested materials for electrical conductivity and insulation. First we set up circuits, retrieving our knowledge of how to do this from Year 4. After that, we selected a range of materials to test and recorded our results.

Thursday 27th January 

Science investigations

We retrieved some of our learning from Year 4 when we discussed insulators and conductors, then we tested materials for thermal insulation or conductivity. We were surprised that most of us had a misconception about coats - most of us thought that if you put a coat on a snowman, it would make it melt more quickly because the coat is warm. By wrapping our ice cubes in ‘coats’ we were able to see that a coat actually stops warm air reaching the ice, which slows its rate of melting. The control ice cube, with no coat, melted most quickly whereas many of us had predicted the one with fabric around it would. We applied to ourselves and realised that our coats are not warm in themselves, they are insulators and block our body heat from escaping and cold air from touching us. What a useful investigation!

Friday 28th January

Archie - Young Leaders Award

We were very excited to begin our Young Leaders Award journey today! We met Archie, the boy who will be helping us as we develop our own leadership skills, and started our own scrapbooks to record our ideas and the progress we make. The Cup challenge was our first activity - we had to work as a team to build a tower with cups but without being allowed to touch them! All we had were elastic bands… everyone managed it in the end! We also produced freeze frames of good and poor leadership examples after discussing these characteristics.

Tuesday 1st February 

Maths

Numicon helped us to develop our conceptual understanding of division when using bus stop method. Using the practical equipment made the process of exchanging clear.

Friday 4th February 

English

Following a discussion about child labour, we held a meeting to discuss why it was not fair for children to work instead of going to school and what should be done. The overseer came to join us - she could not see the problem with children working to help their families make enough money for food, and definitely disagreed with the idea she should pay fair wages so that parents could earn enough to support their families without children having to work too. In role as teachers, parents and missionaries, we had to come up with persuasive counter arguments.

Monday 7th February 

French Day

There was an excited response when French Day was announced. First we compared English to French towns, then watched a video clip about of a child talking about their life in Marseilles. We compared her way of life to ours. After this, we were excited to look under the desks to find names of towns in France. We had to match these cards to information about each town that was up on the walls of the classroom and then share the facts with the class. We located each town using atlases.

Tuesday 8th February 

Science

Today’s investigation involved separating substances that had been mixed up! We worked out which scientific process was effective for which mixture. We used sieving to separate flour and raisins; magnetism to separate paper clips and rice; filtering to separate sand and water (as we realised this was not a solution); and evaporation for salt and water (which was a solution).

Thursday 10th February 

Art

The joy on these faces as they embraced their inner Banksy! After designing a background and a stencil, the last part was to spray paint to create the final piece.