Before learning about the digestive system, we built a human. Children worked together to cut out the bones and organs before deciding where they thought they should go. We were pretty good at deciding where the bones should go but needed a little support with the organs. We then narrowed it down to the organs that are involved with digesting our food.
To help us understand the effects of different liquids on our teeth, we conducted an experiment. We used an egg shell which is similar to the enamel of our teeth and placed it into 5 different liquids – coke, orange juice, dilute, coffee and water. We predicted which liquid would cause the most damage. The majority of the crew thought this was coke, however, we were in for a surprise.
After a week, we observed the changes to the egg. Surprisingly, the egg with the most damage was the one in pure orange. This caused a thin layer to peel off and left the surface mottled and rough. Although, fruit is good for us we need to ensure we brush our teeth because the natural sugar in fruit can damage our teeth.
Last week we started hook week off by learning about teeth. We learned about the different teeth that we have to help us eat. We learned the function (job) of the teeth and the location of each type of teeth. We read a text together about teeth which helped us gain further knowledge about teeth. Did you know that humans have 2 sets of teeth in their lifetime? Did you know that not everyone gets wisdom teeth?
Crew Godley have had a fantastic week exploring their teeth. We began our learning by looking at the different types of teeth we have and their purposes. We explored our mouths with a mirror where we looked at the different teeth we have.
We then created moulds of our teeth so we could compare where we all were we in our journey. Some of us had lost baby teeth whilst others were still waiting too.
We then moved onto setting up our teeth investigation where we will explore the impact different liquids have on our teeth. We created our own question and hypothesis then thought about our variables. We listed all the equipment we would use then created our method.
We then explored the best ways to look after our teeth. We watched a video clip all about healthy teeth and visiting the dentist. We looked at how we should be brushing our teeth and even had a go at this!
Finally, we’ve created our own posters to promote keeping our teeth healthy.
We are loving our new expedition! Today we moved onto understanding about digestion. First we built a human body in mini crews, discussing what we already know. We then moved onto labelling our organs and placing them on our human body.
We then explored the organs in more detail thinking about their role. We thought about which of the organs belong to our digestive system. We watched a video clip to build further background knowledge. We did lots of discussion around each organ thinking about its role and how it adds to the digestive process. We then demonstrated our learning in a mini crew activity. We used picture cards, word cards and explanation cards to match up all the different organs.
From here it got messy! We put the digestive process into practice using biscuits, a banana, water, orange juice and a pair of tights! We loved taking part in this!
We then started writing up our model of the digestive system and will continue to work on this tomorrow.
It has been wonderful to have Crew MI back in the classroom today and what a great start we have had! We have loved getting started with our hook week learning.
We started our learning by looking at the different types of teeth we have!We explored why we have teeth with lots of reading opportunities and lots of focus on our fluency and words per minute. We explored our mouths with a mirror where we looked at the different teeth we have. We labelled a diagram of the teeth then created some writing on the functions of the teeth.
We then moved onto setting up our teeth investigation where we will explore the impact different liquids have on our teeth.
We created our own question and hypothesis then thought about our variables. We listed all the equipment we would use then created our method.
We then explored the best ways to look after our teeth. We watched a video clip all about healthy teeth and visiting the dentist. We looked at how we should be brushing our teeth and even had a go at this! Finally we thought about all the foods and drinks for healthy teeth.
In Crew Mcloughlin, we have been exploring friction in order to help answer our guiding question. This lesson went with a splash as we experimented with water resistance! The children really did focus on ensuring a fair test and ensured we controlled our variables. We also learnt new words along the way such as hydrodynamic and buoyant.
Today, Crew Hamill began looking at mechanisms. We began our lesson by testing our sticky knowledge and recapping previous learning. Following this, Miss Hamill introduced us to some new vocabulary that we would need to understand in order to access our lesson. We then had to look at pictures of different objects and decide which mechanism was being used with each one (E.g. a pulley for a flag pole). We then watched some informative videos about pulleys, lever and gears, making notes on big pieces of chotting paper in mini crews as we did so. Once we’d gathered all of our information, we inputted this onto a Padlet to keep a record of what we had learned.
We moved on from air resistance to start looking at another type of friction – water resistance. We built our background knowledge by watching a few informative videos and reading some key information to help us understand that water resistance is a type of force that uses friction to slow things down that are moving through water. Once we’d learned that the shape of an object in water can impact on the amount of water resistance, we tested our hypothesis that thinner, more streamlined shapes, would travel quicker through the water than wider shapes with a larger surface area. We worked in pairs to create two different shapes using plasticine and then conducted an experiment in which we dropped each shape, at the same time, into a jar that contained the same amount of water. We tested these shapes a few times before recording our results and concluding whether or not our hypothesis was correct. We were pleased to discover that we were correct!
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!
