Champion chariots
This week, Year 4 have completed their Roman chariots. The final thing left to do was to test the chariots against the agreed design criteria. The children have worked very hard to make their product functional, appealing and fit for purpose
Design Criteria
Election ready
The polling station is all set up and ready for the annual School Council elections tomorrow.
Good luck to all candidates.
Making a Viking sun compass
Did you know that the Vikings were one of the first groups of people to invent the sun compass? Where would we be (literally) without inventing a way to navigate the globe?
This week, we have combined our statistics in maths and our Time Travel – Inventions learning to create a sun compass of our own. Hopefully we find out which way is North in the process!
We started by drawing a 9 x 2 table to record time and shadow length.
(We practised some measuring skills at the same time.)
At set intervals throughout the day – as long as the sun was playing ball – we went outside to create our sun compass.
First, we held a metre ruler perpendicularly to the floor to create a shadow. Using tape measures, we found out how long the shadow was and placed an ‘x’ in chalk at its tip.
As you can see from our tables, it was 333cm at 10am- much longer than we predicted!
Challenge your child! True or false? Explain why:
- The shadow was longest at 2pm
- The shadow was shortest at 11:30
- The shadow was 147cm at 10:30
After some intervals, we made predictions about the length of the shadow with varying degrees of success:
By the end of the day, we had made lots of chalk marks on the floor. By drawing a line from our starting point to the closest section of the curve, we have found North!
Living and Learning: Democracy
Thursday 25 October sees us voting for our new school councillors. We’ve been learning all about democracy in preparation for our own election and the children have had lots of questions.
At home, talk about how our country’s voting system works and what your opinions are. The children had some interesting views on what age people should be allowed to vote and when they should not be allowed to anymore. The candidates delivered their speeches today ready for us to make informed decisions in the morning.
Well done to all of those people who chose to stand for election and good luck!
All stand for the judge…
Having learnt all about the gunpowder plot during our topic lessons, we attended court to find out more with lots of us taking on the roles of the main characters.
Not only is this a fun way of extending our knowledge, but it also helps us with our writing. We thought about what questions we’d like to ask the different people involved in the story and what their answers would have been at the time.
The suspects: Guy Fawkes, Robert Catesby, Thomas Percy, John Wright
The witnesses: Mary Arkwright, Arthur Coniston, Lorn Monteagle, King James I 
The prosecution and the defence
The jury
The media
At times, the prosecution really put pressure on our suspects!
Bradford Media Museum
Yesterday, Year 6 went to the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford. We were exploring what engineers do to bring inventions to life as this is our theme for our Time Travel big topic. It was a jam-packed day; we got to see and do all sorts!
Not only did the IMAX film we saw make us squeal and reach out for the things that seemed to be coming out of the screen at us, but it also inspired many of us to want to be engineers. We realised what amazing things engineers achieve to help people and solve problems.
The Wonderlab was a great room to explore, finding out what UV light is, how sound waves can move water, how infrared cameras show which part of our bodies are hot and cold and how light can manipulated to create moving images.
The Engineering Show demonstrated how light can carry sound and taught us how our 3D glasses worked.
The Games Lounge was a step back in time to the very first arcade games which turned out to be just as fun as the games we play today.
We also explored the TV and Animation galleries, seeing how technology has advanced over recent years due to the skills of scientists, engineers and computer programmers.
Active travel in October – week three winner
Well done to our week three winner who made active journeys to school every day last week.
Our active travel section on the website has recently been updated. Have a look at some of the initiatives we take part in to encourage a happy and healthy start to the school day.
Living and Learning – Democracy
This week, we’ve based our learning around our rights and responsibilities – I can take part in democratic decisions.
First, we wrote down what we knew already about democracy. Then, we watched a video from a trusted news source (Newsround) and wrote down what we had learned. Challenge your child: What was the red line on the floor for in the House of Commons?
Through our discussions, we defined some key words…
… and devised some questions that we wanted to know the answer to.
An interesting discussion arose surrounding the age of voting. (Finlay asked: ‘Why do we have to be 18 to vote?’) Some of us thought that it should be lowered because politics affects children, too. Others thought 18 years of age was appropriate because you are legally an adult with enough life experience.
In the interest of all things democratic, we had a vote on the matter.
Should we change the voting age?
21 out of 28 people said yes. 7 out of 28 people said no.
Zakariya noticed that 28 is in the 7 times table: 4 lots of 7 = 28.
We discussed that 7 out of 28 is the same as saying 1 out of 4 or one quarter. That’s the same as saying 25/100 which is equal to 25%.
Using this knowledge, we worked out that 21 out of 28 is the same as saying 3 out of 4 or three quarters.
“It must be 75 out of 100,” said Maggie. Or even 75 one hundredths or 75%!
1 quarter + 3 quarters = 1
25% + 75% = 100%
7 + 21 = 28
Now we know that 75% of Year 5 think the voting age should be changed.
Next, we had another anonymous vote: Which group would you change the voting age to?
The 15-17 category had the majority.
Good luck to all the candidates standing in this year’s school council elections.
Living and Learning – democracy
Within the upcoming School Council elections, we’ve been considering one of the British Values, democracy, in our weekly Living and learning lesson.
This week, it’s our School Council elections. School Councils are democracy in action and we want to promote democracy as a way for children to have a say in what goes on.
Voting is all about democracy:
demo means ‘people’ and cracy means ‘ruling and decision-making’.
We’re excited to hear all the candidate’s speeches ready for the election on Thursday and we reminded ourselves about the voting process:
- Vote once for one person
- You can vote for yourself
- Choose someone who has the best qualities to become a good school councillor rather than just voting for a friend
- You can abstain, not to vote
Thank you to Olivia and Eleanor who have represented the class so well as our school councillors and good luck to all the candidates this week.
Living and Learning: Confident Me self-esteem and body confidence workshop
Recently, Year 5 and 6 took part in a Confident Me self-esteem and body confidence workshop led by representatives from Dove and Unilever.
Body image forms part of our Living and Learning later in the year and as children comment they enjoy visitors delivering Living and Learning, we were keen to run this workshop once again.
The Confident Me Workshop is one of the Dove Self-Esteem Project’s programmes. It addresses issues of body confidence and low self-esteem. The workshop covers topics such as: appearance, beauty and body image and examines how images of models, actors and celebrities are fabricated or manipulated to portray a ‘perfection’ against which our kids often measure themselves. Most of all, the workshops help young people develop the skills and behaviours that lead to positive self-esteem and body confidence.
Resources are available to parents to support and follow up this learning at home.