Author: Miss Wilson

We spotted one of our featured inventors from our Time Travel topic in First News! The article was about Ada Lovelace who invented the first computer program.

Great reading! Keep it up!

This week’s Science is all about levers. As a short introduction, to learn the parts of a lever, Y5 were challenged to make a balanced lever using a pencil, ruler and two coins.

Challenge your child! In our mini lever, which part was the:

• beam?
• load?
• fulcrum?

Some of us managed it to make our levers balanced!

In this week’s Living and Learning lesson, our topic was discrimination. But first, we watched a video about Welsh rugby legend, Gareth Thomas, and thought of adjectives to describe him.

Next, we discussed a recent news story where Gareth Thomas was targeted in a homophobic attack. This means that he was assaulted because he is gay.

Gareth Thomas decided to use restorative practice and to sit down with his attacker and talk. He said: “I thought the perpetrator would learn more that way.” We discussed how the following words were just as applicable for his actions after being attacked as well as playing rugby.

We talked about discrimination against other groups of people, too. We defined sexism, racism, disablism and homophobia.

Importantly, we discussed what to do if you see or hear any discriminatory behaviour or what you should do if it happens to you.

You should call it for what it is. For example, “That’s discrimination and that’s not ok.” You should tell an adult or someone you trust. Being open and honest with what you see or what happens can help everyone to learn.

We linked our L&L to our reading, using a RIC (Retrieve, Infer and understand writer’s Choice). This helped us discuss who might be discriminated against and that it’s not right because everyone should be treated fairly and given the same opportunities.

 

Challenge your child: Can they tell you a definition for discrimination without looking? Do they know what to do if they see or hear it happening?

 

 

In Science, this week, Year 5 have been learning about water resistance. We set up an experiment that would test which plasticine shapes were the most and least water resistant using large cylindrical flasks of water.

#

Next, we planned our different shapes within our groups.

Using the same sized lump of plasticine, we then made each of our shapes. Challenge your child: Why was it important to use the same size blob of plasticine?

In order to test the water resistance, we dropped shape 1 and 2 into the tubes. Every round, the fastest shape would advance. At the end, we were left with the fastest shape and therefore the shape with the least water resistance.

Action replay 1  – Notice how the garlic bulb shape on the right fell a lot slower. This is because it had a very flat surface on the bottom which increased the water resistance.

Some races were so close that we needed a slow-mo replay from our chief photographer, Mr Wicks, who was able to get a screen shot of an action replay to determine which touched the bottom first!

Shapes that were more streamlined and thinner (e.g. cones) had less water resistance and fell quicker. Shapes that had flat faces or were bulky (e.g. cubes) had more water resistance and they fell really slowly. It was great to see it happening before our very eyes!

(Sometimes, it didn’t always go to plan: blooper 1 and blooper 2.)

And the winner is…

Year 5’s chosen charity (the World Wildlife Fund) eventually went on to be chosen by our school council as Moortown’s new charity.

Here’s an extract from their website:

The world’s leading conservation organization, WWF works in 100 countries and is supported by more than one million members in the United States and close to five million globally. WWF’s unique way of working combines global reach with a foundation in science, involves action at every level from local to global, and ensures the delivery of innovative solutions that meet the needs of both people and nature.

 

This week, Year 5 have been learning about air resistance! Here’s our post to get you up to speed on our sprinting experiment. Hope it’s not a drag!

We had three participants who first ran from the gate to the gazebo and back without the parachute on (shown here by our fantastic photographers) and these were timed.

The same people ran again but this time with a parachute attached to their back and timed again.

 

All three participants were much slower on their second run. Challenge your child to explain the science behind it!

Our participants said:

• “It felt like someone was pulling you back when you were running!”
• “It felt like someone lightly tugging you as you were running.”
• “The parachute run was harder. The faster you go, the more the wind pulls you back.”
• “It was quite exciting to see how fast they went.”
• “The parachute run had more air resistance because the air was getting trapped in the parachute and slowing it down.”
• “It was nice seeing how quick they were and seeing how much difference the parachute made.” 
• “I was kind of surprised and kind of not surprised. I was surprised that it made it that much slower but I did know that it would make them slower.”