Maple Class Inspire, nurture and challenge 

This afternoon we had a lot of fun solving maths puzzles in teams.

This week we have been using bar models to help us find fractions of amounts. We have been able to make the link between fractions and division and some of us are using multiplication to find non-unit fractions of amounts.

We had a very exciting visit to an aviation museum today. A lot of fun was had by all. The children had plenty of learning opportunities, including sitting in the cockpit of a WW1 plane, similar to those flown by the earliest pilots such as Amelia Earhart. They were able to fly in a flight simulator, touch a Hurricane fighter jet and sketch their favourite artefacts within the museum.

This visit will lead into our literacy, history and DT work next week.

Today was so much fun! We represented each process of digestion using lots of different pieces of equipment. This is Ollie’s description of our experiment:

“We cut up bread and a banana using scissors which were the incisors and canines. We cut them into a bowl which was the mouth. Then we added a bit of “saliva” (salt water) using pipettes to mix with the food. We put our fists in plastic cups and mashed up the mixture- this was the molars chewing it.

Then we used a spoon, which was the tongue, to swallow the food down the oesophagus (a cardboard tube). It went into a plastic bag with vinegar in it, which was the stomach. We churned it up and mixed it around. Then came the disgusting bit! We cut a hole in the corner of the bag and squeezed the food and acid into a pair of tights which we used as the small intestines. We squeezed it along the tights and lots of water came out. This is the job of the intestines because our body needs water. We also dipped the tights into red water which was like the blood stream and particles came out. This was like the nutrients coming out into the blood from the food.

When it had been squeezed all along the tights we cut the end and it came out like poo!”

As part of Science week, we made 3d digestive system posters using mixed media to show our learning about the function of each organ.

This week in Maths we have continued learning about fractions. We had to represent improper fractions and prove that we knew they are more than a whole.

This week is British Science Week and there is lots of science going on around the school.

In Maple classes, we have begun the week by exploring the effect of acid and sugar on tooth enamel, as part of our work on teeth, the mouth and the digestive system.

We put three eggs into three different jars: one with vinegar in, one with milk and one with Coca-Cola. We discovered that the vinegar discoloured the egg shell, which represents our tooth enamel, the milk had no effect on the egg and the Coca-Cola began to break the egg shell after a few minutes!

Then, we weeded and re=planted our class allotment. We will be comparing which types of bulb grow the quickest based on the percentage amount of shade that section of the allotment has.

Thirdly, we did an experiment called Sneeze Zone which looked at the journey of germs and how they spread. We made predictions and explored the correlation between distance from a sneezer and how many drops of water were on our people!