Air Resistance – Parachutes

This week, Crew Hamill have continued their expedition lessons by focusing on another force – air resistance. We looked at what air resistance is – a type of friction between air and another material – and looked at the impact this had on objects when they fell to the ground. We tested it out by dropping two pieces of paper (one flat and one screwed into a ball) and discussed which one would fall to the ground first. We then discussed why this might have happened. Together, we predicted the ball of paper would fall fastest as it was more dense and had a smaller surface area. We were then introduced to our mission from the National Space Station:

Using our design brief, we worked in pairs to design and create a parachute that could be tested for air resistance. We worked in mini crews to create these and then came together as a whole crew to test them out. We began by ordering the parachutes from biggest to smallest in order to test whether our prediction (that larger parachutes will take longer to fall to the floor as there will be more air resistance) was correct. We found that we were correct – the larger the canopy on the parachute, the longer it took to fall to the ground. However, there was one anomaly with a parachute that had been made with a thicker canopy and this effected the results slightly.

We loved conducting a fair test to investigate! Raza made an excellent scientist by being our constant variable and being the only one to drop each of the parachutes!

Single-Clause Sentences

On Monday, Crew Hamill moved their grammar to the next stage as they began looking at single-clause sentences. We looked at what a clause was (a group of words that include a subject and a verb) and then used our prior knowledge of identifying subjects and verbs to figure out where our single clause sentences were. We followed our script, identifying the first verb in the sentence. One we had this, we identified the subject of that verb. We repeated this until all our of verbs and subjects had been identified and then asked ourselves when the verb ended so that we could put a full stop as we had a full, independent clause with a subject and a verb. We could the go back and add in capital letters.

XP Outdoors

Crew Hamill were working on their team building skills today where they did loop de loop and lilly pads. In loop de loop they all joined hands in a circle and then they had to get the hola hoop round the circle without breaking hands. Then in lilly pad they were split into 2 teams where they had 6 rubber spots and they had to get their team from one side to the other without falling off.

End of Half Term Treat

Crew Hamill LOVED our bouncy castle treat at the end of this half term! We also managed to convince Miss Hamill to finally make us all a cup of tea! Miss Hamill made a deal with Jenson that if his howls improved as the half term went on, she would make him a cup of tea as he’d been asking for one all half term. We supported Jenson in this so Miss Hamill made one for everyone! Well done, Jenson 🙂 and to the rest of Crew Hamill for your support!

Identifying the subject

During the last week of half term, Crew Hamill have worked hard to identify the subject of a sentence. The subject is who or what is doing the action within the sentence. To help us do this, we followed a script in which we identified the first verb (action word) and then asked ourselves who or what did that action. To consolidate this learning, we were given jumbled up sentences. Our first job was to structure our sentences. We knew they began with a capital letter and ended with a full stop so these were the first cards we placed. Then we organised the rest of the words until we had a fully independent clause that made sense. Once we’d done this, we identified the verb and subject.

What are the effects of friction?

To begin part one of our lesson on friction, we recapped some of our prior knowledge and looked at the scientific vocabulary that we needed for the lesson. We then looked at what friction is and watched a video that detailed what life would be like without friction. Once we’d had some more knowledge of friction, we began part two of our lesson which focused on an investigation in which we looked at the effects of friction on a toy car. Before we began our investigation, we discussed as a crew what we thought might happen and came up with a crew hypothesis. We then conducted the experiment to see if our hypothesis would be correct. We used a wooden ramp and 4 different materials to test how far the car would travel on the different surfaces. We were happy to conclude that our hypothesis was correct! We found out that a rougher surface would produce more friction, meaning the car would travel a shorter distance and that with a smoother surface it would travel further as there is less friction.

Irregular Verb Phrases

Our final lesson on verbs began with a game of charades! We circled up, one person chose a verb card and then they had to act out their verb for the rest of the crew to guess. We had a giggle when Jenson started dancing! Following this, we looked at irregular verbs in the past tense and identified what happened when these formed verb phrases. We then had to identify which verb phrases had been formed correctly and correct any which had the past tense verb wrong.

Multiply and divide by 10, 100 and 1000

To help us understand what happens to numbers when we multiply and divide by 10, 100 and 1000, we became a human number. We looked at columns and were introduced to the decimal point. Ellie-May was a great decimal point and took her role very seriously, making sure she didn’t move! We then looked at what would happen to our number if we multiplied or divided by 10, 100 and 1000 and how our number would move one, two or three places on our place value chart.