Mr Roundtree, Author at Moortown Primary School, Leeds

Lights…Camera…Action

On our visit to the National Media Museum in Bradford, we had a great time enjoying and making films. A big highlight for all of us was the 3D IMAX film all about dinosaurs. Check us out all ready in our glasses…

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We stood behind and in front of the camera in our TV production workshop, learning all about the different stages that are involved in bringing things to our screens at home.

And we also had time for a bit of fun in the Games Lounge (where we saw how technology has advanced over the years) and the Magic Factory (where we learned all about the role of mirrors in the history of film).

What a great day out!

Prepare for your audition

On Wednesday, Year 5 and 6 will have the opportunity to auditions for parts in our upcoming production…

Robin and the Sherwood Hoodies.

If the children want a speaking part (no matter how big or how small) they’ve been asked to be ready to give a very short demonstration of their acting skills and will have the opportunity to identify which parts they’re interested in. Obviously, we won’t be able to give everyone their first choice but we’ll aim to give anyone who wants a speaking part some lines. Anything can be prepared for the audition but I’ve attached some scenes if the children want to use use those.

We’ve also discussed the importance of other roles in theatre: lighting, props, sound, stage hands, front of house. Any children not wanting an acting part will still be involved in the singing but may wish to take on one of these roles instead.

Break a leg!

13 May 2016

This week’s creative homework is due on Wednesday 16 May.

To be able to name and describe the properties of 2D and 3D shapes.

Next week’s Maths will be all about shape. In Year 5, we need to be able to identify what 3D shape a net will make; identify and measure angles; and say whether a shape is regular or irregular.

Before we can do any of that, we need to be confident naming and describing 2D and 3D shapes and their properties. These are the 2D shapes we should be able to identify and describe:

triangles (equilateral, isosceles, right-angled, scalene)
quadrilaterals (kite, rhombus, trapezium, parallelogram)
pentagon
hexagon
heptagon
octagon
decagon

We should be able to discuss ‘LADS’:

Lines – how many, equal lengths, parallels?
Angles – how many, which type, equal opposites, right-angles?
Diagonals – how many can we spot by joining vertices?
Symmetry – does it have any lines of symmetry? Where? How many?

We should also know the following 3D shapes:

sphere
cuboid
cube
prisms (pentagonal, hexagonal etc…)
cylinder
pyramid
tetrahedron

13 May 2016

This week’s practice makes perfect homework is due on Wednesday 18 May.

To be able to describe the position of a shape, reflect it and translate it.

These are all of the skills we’ve been learning during Maths this week. We’ve been remembering that we need to go along the x axis then the y axis for co-ordinates and making sure we know the difference between reflection and translation.

13 May 2016

This week’s spellings are to practise changing …ble to …bly. Note how each word initially ends in ‘e’ but this is removed when the ‘y’ is added.

possible, possibly,
impossible
horrible, horribly,
terrible, terribly,
visible, visibly,
invisible
incredible, incredibly,
sensible, sensibly

These words will be tested on Friday 20 May but, don’t forget, the point of learning these spellings is to spell them correctly – not to do well in a test!

The words have now been added to Spellodrome so there are plenty of different ways we can practise our spellings.

Films in the making

As part of our child-led film topic, we’ve been working on creating our own stop motion animation films. We worked really well together today to develop some short films that we’ll share with you soon.

We’re going to try our hand at some editing next to see if we can give them a more professional finish and audio too. We’ll then analyse our efforts, think about what we need to improve and have another go at it before half term to see if we improve. …Just like they’d do in the films!

Skittles science continued…

After our science experiment with Skittles last week, we went on to ask our own questions and plan our own experiment from it.

What will happen if you change the sweet?
What will happen if you change the number of Skittles?
What will happen if you change the liquid?

This meant we could discuss independent and constant variables to ensure that we were testing just one thing and it was really interesting to see which of our predictions were correct and what was surprising.

Changing the number of Skittles.

Changing the type of sweet.

Changing the liquid.

…all really great Science, although we couldn’t help but be distracted by wanting to eat all of the lovely sweets we had in front of us!

Film production

Our film topic continues as we move into creating our own stop motion animations. The children have teamed up and started the process by noting down all of their different ideas.

They then decided on one together and started scripting (organising, assigning roles, noting what they would need) before mapping out their idea onto a storyboard.

We’ll begin filming next week and, hopefully, will be able to publish some of our masterpieces so that you can watch them at home.

Rocket seeds

A quick update on our rocket seeds…

They’re growing! We’ve been watering them and turning them each day so that they all receive the same amount of sunlight.

We can’t see any difference between the red and the blue yet but there is a noticeable difference according to which windowsill they’re on. We’ve concluded that one of the windowsills doesn’t receive as much sunlight as the others because those seeds are growing at a much slower rate.

Today, we’ll be calculating the percentage of seeds that have grown in each seed tray and noting it on our record sheet.

06 May 2016

This week’s spellings mainly focus on words with the ‘erred‘ spelling pattern with some other odd double ups included. Ten of these spellings will be tested on Friday 13 May.

referred, reference, referee
preferred, preference, preferring
transferred, transferring, transference
interrupt, interrupting, interrupted
necessary, unnecessary
assistance, assistant, assisted, assisting

Don’t forget: it’s really important to learn what these spellings mean, how to use them in a sentence and be able to spell them beyond a test.