Phonics mornings
Thank you for attending our Maths Mornings last week.
We hope you enjoyed them and found them useful.
Don’t forget this week’s Phonics Mornings.
Packed lunches
Struggling for ideas for a healthy packed lunch?
Change4life have some great tips and easy to prepare ideas based on the Eatwell Guide.
Also make reference to our Packed Lunch Guidance.
Food Science
Lucy from Marks and Spencer’s came in and taught us about the science that goes into their famous melt-in-the-middle puddings. We learnt about emulsifiers and the role these play in the pudding. I think our favourite part was the taste test. What a great job that would be!
STEM Project
The following pictures sum up our project. After finding out how elastic band cars work, we designed and planned our own. The children had to make decisions about the size of the wheels, type of elastic band and the style of the frame. Each group planned something different which was good to see!
We began making the frame and then added the mounts for the axles. When we tested out the axles, we discovered a problem – can your child tell you what it was? So we found some different axles to use and carefully measured, marked and sawed these. After some gluing of the wheels, the cars were ready for their power source – the elastic band. Can your child explain to you how the elastic band makes the car work?
We were so excited to test the cars! Unfortunately, they didn’t work as well as we had hoped. There were many things wrong including wheel-spinning, glue stopping the wheels from spinning, axles which were too short, wheels falling off…
However, Year 3 were resilient and resourceful and managed to fix all these problems themselves and improved the performance of the car! I was so proud of how well they worked together to solve these problems.
When they were finally ready, we had a competition and the winning team’s car went over one and a half metres!
Well done, Year 3!
STEM week – Thursday
It’s been a busy day! We started the day by battling with our bookmarks again and attempting to have thirty which had flashing lights. We perhaps achieved half of this target but demonstrated immense patience and resilience in the process. Once again, Mrs Raseta and I were far too busy for pictures but (hopefully) we’ll have some finished products to show you tomorrow.
Following this, we had a fab visit from M&S who talked to us about the history of the company, moving on to focus on their most popular product: the Melt in the Middle Pudding. We learnt the science behind how the pudding is preserved using emulsifiers and explored the ingredients involved in this perfect pudding.
Finally, the moment we’d all be waiting for, we did a (very scientific) taste testing – all in the name of Science of course.
Skittle Toy
This week, our STEM project has been to make our own version of a Victorian skittle game. The children were shown a big version at the start of the week and then had to design and make their own table top version. They have measured, sawn and drilled, solved problems, worked cooperatively to finish their toys. They have also written sets of instructions to tell others how to play the game.
Unfortunately, we didn’t have the time to make a toy for every person so the children worked in pairs. If your child doesn’t bring the toy home, they’ll take home some of the left over materials so that they can make their own at home.
Trapped in the ice!
In this science experiment, children had to consider how they could help some goblins escape from the ice. They had to think scientifically: justifying their predictions, deciding how they’d make it a fair test and how they’d measure their results accurately.
Trapped in the ice!
In a Science lesson this week, we investigated how we could release some people who were trapped in ice!
Children had to think about how they could release the people. There were lost of suggestions: smashing the ice, melting it by using hot water, the sun, a radiator, using salt, using the warmth from our hands.
We tested some of these and measured how quickly the ice was melting by measuring how much water had melted and how much they had melted by observing them carefully.
James Mayhew Homework
Thanks for all the letters and emails to James Mayhew. We’ve even had a response from the author to Will’s email!
Below are some of our favourite homeworks. A special mention to Albie’s letter and Harris’ email which were also chosen as favourites.
Day 4 of STEM week
Our brilliant STEM week continued today as we were visited by a representative from Marks and Spencer’s. We learnt about one of their biggest sellers: ‘Melt in the Middle Chocolate Pudding’. After learning about the history of the organisation, we learnt all about the chocolate desserts.
For example, did you know emulsifiers are used to ensure the cake lasts longer? They help the natural oils and waters remain mixed so you don’t get an oily pudding. After a bit more theory we were lucky enough to do a taste test. We sampled the pudding and gave it scores out of 5 – full marks from me!
After that, we reflected on some learning from Monday afternoon about staying safe online. We made iMovies to inform others of the dangers around online hackers.
A collage of our learning.