Term 4 - Week 1

Welcome back to Term 4.  I hope you all had a lovely Easter Break.

Here are some of the learning activities we took part in the first week back.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid

On Monday 28th April we are going to be taking part in a live webcast with Jeff Kinney, author of the very popular series, Diary of a Wimpy Kid.  We are completing some of the pre-event tasks in the 2 weeks before the event. 

We explored laughter.  Jeff Kinney writes in a humorous way and we thought of all the different ways we could name a type of laugh.  We had a huge list...so we decided to act them out.  Lots of fun!

We also split into 2 groups - pupils who had read the books and pupils who had not read the books.  We then set up interview stations.  The group who had not read the books went on a fact finding mission to learn as much as possible from those who had read them.  

This activity helped us to develop our talking and listening skills.

Project

Our new topic this term is 'Changing Materials'.  This is a science based topic.  P5 are VERY excited about this project and are looking forward to doing lots of experiments.  As a class we have discussed the other aspects of science which involves talking, listening, questionings, recording and analysing.  P5 soon realised that there is much more to science than just experiments to blow things up! 

We decided that it would only be fair if everyone agree to put in effort to every part of the topic and not just the fun experiment bits.  Therefore, we wrote up a class contract which we all agreed to and signed.

We then went on to learn about SOLIDS, LIQUIDS and GASES.  We thought of some questions we would like to try and answer throughout our project.  

We discussed the different types of solids, liquids and gases (some made us giggle) and started to make posters to show this information.

We also acted out what the particles are doing within each of the 3 matters.

In a SOLID, the particles are very close together making it hard to condense the shape.  A solid keeps its shape when placed in a container.

In a LIQUID, the particles are quite close together but there are some gaps to help it flow and take the shape of the container they are stored in.

In a GAS the particles are spaced out, meaning they spread out in the container they are stored in or float into the air if not contained.

Easter Fun! 

As it was Good Friday we completed some Easter themed activities.  We completed a Maths Easter Egg Hunt around the school.  There were 10 questions hidden around the building, covering topics we learned about last term.  We had to find the question, answer them and then head back to class.  Most of us did really well...some of us could have read the questions more carefully!  

In the afternoon we decided to give pom pom making a go!  Although it looked like a sheep had exploded in our classroom we had good fun problem solving the task.  The girls seemed to find it easier than the boys!