Author: Mr Roundtree

In Science, we’re learning about about dissolving which involves being familiar with some tricky vocabulary: solute, solvent, soluble, insoluble, solution.

We know that salt will dissolve in water and used this to help us to understand the scientific terminology above.

• Salt is a solute.
• Water is a solvent.
• Salt is soluble.
• Salt and water create a solution.

We then applied this knowledge to making predictions about other substance: coffee, sugar, bicarbonate of soda, rice and sand. Having made our predictions about which would and wouldn’t create a solution if mixed with water, we found out by testing them.

Finally, we were tasked with getting the dissolved salt back out of the water. There were a few puzzled faces and the children’s initial response was, ‘You can’t.’ However, with a few suggestions of equipment and a bit of thinking about learning last year, we decided you could separate all of the substance we’d testing by either sieving them, filtering them or, if a solution had been created, allowing the water to evaporate.

At home, see whether you can spot things, particularly in the kitchen cupboards, that will and will not create a solution when added to water. If you’re not sure, try it out.

In our Living and Learning lessons, we’ve been finding out more about mental health.

Talk to us at home about what mental health is and what decision you can make as a family to ensure you’re mentally healthy. We discussed what can affect our physical, mental and emotional health and quickly realised that these three areas are very closely linked.

During our mini topic, ‘ What’s the Matter’, Year One are focussing on materials in Science lessons. In our latest Science lesson, the children had the opportunity to explore how the shape of object can be changed by squashing, bending, twisting and stretching.

Year 6 visited the VEOLIA centre in Leeds this morning as part of their science learning. We’re currently learning about properties of materials and how this affects what we make objects out of and recycling is one of those properties – one that, currently, is very topical.

The children were pleasantly surprised when we arrived as many were under the impression our visit was to the tip! Luckily, our coach pulled up outside the very modern, state of the art VEOLIA building and there was almost an audible sigh of relief from the class.

We learnt all about how the centre works in order to work towards Leeds becoming a zero waste city. This great video can tell you more about it so you can discuss it home and see how you can help too.

We had a tour of the building which included going to see the huge living wall on the outside (very high up); entering the operation room where everything was controlled; and seeing the huge grabber dive in to pick up 3.6tonnes of rubbish to drop into the furnace where it’s burned at 850 degrees! We all made a pledge for what we could do to contribute towards reducing waste in Leeds: ask us what we decided and see whether you could do it too.

And, we finished the morning off by putting everything we’d learnt into a bit of healthy competition. Ask us how the game worked and something we learnt while we were playing.

There’s lots you could do at home to help Leeds reduce its waste. See whether your child can suggest something and see whether you’re putting the correct items into the correct bins.

I hope everyone’s holidays were lovely.

It’s been an enjoyable, action-packed start to the Spring term today. We’re exploring poetry this week and so spent the morning reading poems, sharing our thoughts with each other and creating performances in groups and as a class.

Y6 have come back ready to learn with smiley faces and a great attitude.

Our Science learning continued this week by exploring how levers work. Levers are a fantastic invention which require a smaller force to be applied to lift or move a load.

We used rulers and pencils to create our own levers and investigated what we needed to do to balance coins of different weights.

Grace made a great observation that the heavier coin needed to be nearer to the fulcrum (ask your child what that is) and the lighter coin should be further away. Once she made this suggestion, lots of us were successful in balancing two different coins.

We moved on to investigate this on a larger scale, finding out how far from the fulcrum different masses (900g, 800g… all the way to 100g) had to be to balance a 1kg mass.

100g had to be 79cm away from the fulcrum but it did balance with 1kg! Amazing.

See whether you can create your own lever at home and whether you can find some levers around the house. We started off our learning by realising just how useful a nut cracker is – it’s a lever you know!