We’ve had an amazing time this evening at our disco, it was lovely to see all the children practising their best dance moves! We can’t wait for the next one.
Disco Fun
Category : Curriculum
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.
XP Outdoors
Today in forest school Crew Welburn loved making dragons out of toilet rolls, tissue paper, pom poms and googly eyes
Friction experiment
Today we experimented with friction! We used a range of materials (wood, tea-towel, silk and a cushion) to test out the question, ‘How does the texture of a surface affect the amount of friction?’ We used a ramp and a car and covered the ramp with different textures. We found out that the rougher the surface, the more friction. The smoother the surface, the less friction.
Sliding into half term
What a great way to end the half term by having some time on the bouncy castle. Lots of bouncing, sliding and flipping. Some children even learned how to do a flip with the help of their peers.
My maths – consolidation
During the last week, children had the opportunity to consolidate some of their learning using Mymaths. This allowed staff to do some 1:1 time to purple pen in maths books.
Subject and verb
As our do now, we consolidated our learning about regular and irregular verbs as this was an area from out touchdown on verbs that we need to continue drip feeding into our learning.
We have now moved on to new learning in grammar where we need to understand the subject and verb within a sentence. We used a script to help us identify the verb and then who or what was doing the action.
For example: The skull protects the brain.
What is the first verb?
Protects
What protects? Who protects?
The skull
Therefore the skull is the subject of the sentence.
This script helped us focus and find the subject.
When we moved on to the subject as a pronoun, we struggled with this so we had a practical lesson where we could form a sentence that made sense then identify the verb and who or what did that action. This helped us understand more and this was evident when children went back to purple pen their exit ticket from the previous lesson and got it correct.
Roles of men and women during Wartimes
In history, we explored the roles of men and women during wartimes. Children learned that everyone played a vital role towards the war effort whether that was on the frontline or on the home front. Children then completed an exit ticket to explain the job they would want and explain why. Teddy gave a great explanation for why he’d want to be making bombs.
