Group 1 and 2 used concrete materials to explore more complex number patterns. We made the first 3 terms before identifying a rule that would allow us to continue the patterns.
Once we felt confident, we created our own challenge sequences for a partner to solve.
After the success of our Castles and Bridges Technologies topic, we have decided to keep the enthusiasm going by holding fortnightly S.T.E.M challenges! We can chose to work on a S.T.E.M project when we finish our classwork or during choice time.
What is S.T.E.M?
S.T.E.M is a curriculum based on the idea of educating students in four specific disciplines — Science, Technologies, Engineering and Mathematics — in an interdisciplinary and applied approach.
So far this month we have had a Snowball Catapult Challenge where pupils have designed and built catapults to launch a snowball (cotton wool) as far as possible! We have reflected and changed our designs as we test them.
We have been learning lots of skills in gymnastics and gaining confidence whilst performing.
We have been creative in the ways in which we travel, jump, land and balance. We have also tried lots of partner, trio and group balances. We have recently been trying to improve our rope skills.
We have been learning to apply our imagination and creativity into design. The pupils of Primary 5/1 have been given full responsibility over their class display.
We have been doing a novel study on Charlie and the Chicolate Factory, focusing on how Roald Dahl brought character and setting to life through his words.
We focussed on the chapter ‘The Chocolate Room’, highlighting the variety of words used. We then made a sketch of what we imagined the room to look like. We voted on our favourite design and got to work on creating our class display.
We used materials in our art cupboard to make a chocolate river and waterfall, candy floss clouds, name signs and candy cane trees.
We can’t wait to see what it will look like when it’s finished!
I would like to take this opportunity to thank parents and families for their very kind get well messages and lovely Christmas gifts. Presents were delivered to me over the holidays and quite a few tags had fallen off the gift bags so I feel it’s better to have one big thank you on our class blog!
Stay tuned to our blog to see all our learning in the new year.
P5 continued to learn more about area and perimeter this week. We thought it was time we challenged ourselves to apply our skills in real life challenges. We discussed jobs that may use area and perimeter as part of Developing the Young Workforce (DYW). We understand that the builders and architects that have been involved in building our new nursery will have used lots of skills in area and perimeter too!
Miss Hamilton set the class two NRich problem solving challenges. First, we thought carefully about the problem and then discussed how we could begin to solve it. After much discussion and evaluating, we finally reached our solution! Both groups shared their learning with one another. We discovered that:
Well done to our amazing problem solvers! 💪 We love a challenge!
Through the Window challenged us to figure out why glass windows and their frames had been priced the way they had. We had to work backwards to guess, check and improve our possible price solutions after figuring out the area and perimeter. Phew! Lots of collaboration and discussion meant we were successful in finding the answers:
Our second challenge was called Numerically Equal. We had to investigate whether it was possible for a square to have an equal perimeter and area. Again, we worked logically together to guess, check and improve. It didn’t take too long before we found that a square with sides 4cm would work! We increased the challenge and checked all other possible solutions before seeing if a rectangle could also have equal perimeter and area. As a group we found a solution: a rectangle with sides 6cm x 3cm! One pupil even realised the rectangle’s length was twice the breadth. Very impressive.
For the last 2 weeks, Primary 5 have planned, written and illustrated their own spooky stories. We listened to lots of different types of Halloween stories read by Miss Hamilton and discussed their key features. We took inspiration from these stories and used our imagination to create a short chapter book.
We are so proud of them and we had the best time launching them on Halloween. Primary 6 kindly visited our classroom to read our stories and give us some feedback on our work,
We got some lovely feedback from Primary 6:
“That was such a good story. I loved the twist at the end!”
“I loved your characters. You described them really well.”
“The story I read was really funny even though it was spooky!”
To celebrate, we dooked for apples and tried some Halloween themed targets such as suduko and French poems.
We have been learning about area and perimeter in Mathematics. We worked hard on our area problems, making sure we checked our work carefully.
We also had great fun playing games to reinforce our learning. It was great to see individuals challenging themselves with harder problems too!
Group 1 and some children tried applying what they learned about area to calculate the area of compound shapes.
We played Area Colours which is a partner game where we had to play against each other to cover our side of squared paper in squares and rectangles, calculating the area as we worked.
We also used LEGO to create various squares and rectangles to calculate area and perimeter, reminding ourselves of the difference between the two. Two of our pupils made a vary large rectangle to challenge themselves and others. They used a simpler case to calculate the large area – well done!
Two more pupils went to the football challenge to calculate which football team had the largest pitch. It was great to see the boys applying their mental strategies to partition larger numbers. Well done on solving the challenge correctly!
We have just started a block of Fitness in P.E where we hope to improve our fitness levels by participating in a range of games and circuits. There were lots of red faces by the end of our session so we made sure we cooled down too. Check out our efforts…
Miss Hamilton and P5.1 would like to thank all the family and friends who visited our classroom on Open Afternoon. We loved sharing our learning and working on challenges together.
We appreciate many family members cannot attend Open Afternoon due to work commitments so we would like share our displays through our blog.
Many thanks again.
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