This term we’ve been thinking like scientists. We learned about the differences between solids, gases and liquids. In a solid, its particles are tightly packed together; in a liquid the particles are slightly separated; while in a gas the particles are spread far apart. We also learned that it’s difficult to change the shape of a solid; that liquids take the shape of any container they’re placed in; and that gases are usually kept in some kind of container. All very advanced stuff! Below, we have some physical representations of what a liquid and gases’ particle composition looks like:

We have been working really hard this term. As a reward, we spent some of Friday afternoon enjoying a pyjama party. After lunch, everyone changed into their pyjamas. We watched a film and had some snacks and juice. We all had a great time!

We had another wonderful Fit Thursday in the sunshine! We played basketball, table tennis, hockey, football…and even Gaelic football! Another successful Fit Thursday…we were all fit for bed by the end of the day!

We have conducted lots of experiments this year. We decided to build on our knowledge of soluble and insoluble substances. We experimented with household items like flour, cocoa powder and salt. We found that creating these solutions was similar to things we see at home like making pasta (we add salt to the boiling water at home), making a cup of tea (stirring a spoon of sugar) and making hot chocolate!

I’m delighted to say that we are becoming more comfortable using the scientific vocabulary that will help us in the future: apparatus, saturated, soluble and dissolve have all become part and parcel of our language during these experiments!

We are very proud that Taylor has beaten her personal best in the 100m backstroke and butterfly. She smashed both her personal bests! Well done Taylor, you are an inspiration to us all!

We’ve been practising our football skills over the past few weeks. We are confident with our dribbling skills and today we were learning how to shoot the ball correctly. We remembered to put our arms out for balance, to follow through after we hit the ball with the laces, and to place our non-shooting foot beside the ball for more balance.

Today, we began to use the programme Scratch. This is a tool that allows us to control the movements of different characters or sprites. Coding means that we can tell the character what to do by creating a computer script. The script is like a jigsaw puzzle that we have to put together. The jigsaw puzzle or script needs to fit together in order for it to work.

We had amazing fun creating and adding sprites. We put in some funky background and we even made our sprites speak!

In Maths this morning, we consolidated our knowledge of addition and multiplication by playing human noughts and crosses. We set up nine chairs at the top of the classroom and split the class into two teams. Each person had to answer a question correctly in order to sit down on one of the chairs on our “board”. We had lots of fun!

We’ve been looking at measurement and area over the last few weeks. We decided to try and find the area of classroom objects by using 1cm2 blocks. We covered each shape with the blocks, counted them up and then we were left with an area in cm2. However, we soon discovered a quicker way to complete this job. Instead of filling the object completely with blocks, we found that placing them on the length and width of the object was enough. We could multiply these two numbers by each other and get the same answer…saving us time!