Tag Archives: Co-operative Learning

Electricity

Today we looked at the next aspect of our topic  – electricity.  It was great fun exploring the electricity boxes and trying to make an electrical circuit to light the bulbs!  Lots of exciting discoveries were made  and I’m sure the hilarity could be heard throughout the school as we tried to create a complete circuit with our bodies!

 

Health and Wellbeing

Today in our Health and wellbeing we started to discuss the changes we and our body make in preparation for parenthood.

There was a lot of discussion around the different types of relationship we will face throughout our life. Sharing thoughts for how these relationships can sometimes be good and sometimes not, yet it is how we face these that will help to mould the person we become in the future.

The class split into groups and discussed the important decisions that we must make before (in adulthood) a couple decides to have a baby. This was a great exercise that proved to be much trickier for some than they expected as there was no right or wrong answer.

We had some good discussions over what was perceived to be right and not in the types of relationships and environments in which we could raise a family. It was lovely to hear that the pupils had a very open mind to all of the questions asked and their main concern was that a family was loved and cared for as this was the ideal environment for a family to flourish.

Rocket launch day!!

We’ve had a super morning today launching our bottle rockets at the sports pitch!

The pupils have been using our learning on forces – notably friction, air resistance and thrust – to try and adjust their own bottles to build the best rocket design possible. There have been some variations in style and we have all been looking forward to the day when we finally got to test them out…

We set a challenge to see which group could get their rocket to fly the furthest.

Becca and Hannah were the winners with a magnificent 24metres!

Once all of the groups had launched their rockets for distance the ones who struggled with coverage were given the chance to “take to the sky”.

It was a lovely, slightly chilly, morning and a fantastic way to extend our learning outside the classroom. I hope the pupils enjoyed the activity as much as I did – though they did work me hard with the hand pump and I did get a little wet a few times …

Engineers in the making

This term we have been exploring forces. Using this knowledge and understanding we spent the morning designing and constructing our own bottle rockets.

The pupils were working in pairs to design a rocket that they thought would be aerodynamic and light, but withstand enough pressure to create optimum thrust (and distance) for launch day.

We are looking forward to finishing the project at the beginning of the next term and seeing who’s rocket performed the best on launch day!

French in the sunshine

Today we took advantage of the beautiful weather and used the multicourt to cement our recent French learning. The pupils competed in a game of dictation.

They had to run to the opposite side of the court to read a French phrase, try to memorise it and repeat to their awaiting team members – correct spelling and pronunciation was key as they later found when peer assessing their efforts in class.

The pupils really enjoyed the activity and are looking forward to playing it again in the future – next time some will focus on the attention to detail and not just the speed.

Balloon rockets

This afternoon we have been building on our understanding of forces. We began the afternoon with discussions over what forces are and how they are used to propel rockets to space. We also looked at the impact friction, air and water resistance have on movement of objects.

These discussions then created more interest on rocket launches, with questions of how is a rocket launched and what happens when it goes wrong? We watched a few video clips to gain a better understanding.

After this, it was our chance to put some of this learning into action with investigations into how size and material (friction) impact on the distance a balloon rocket travels along a “track”.

This will form the foundations for further understanding and applications of our forces investigations.

 

 

Paper bridges

This morning we worked in pairs to see how strong we could make a bridge using only paper …

We investigated how a simple activity of adding folds or additional support structures could greatly increase the mass that one piece of paper could support.

Some then explored how this differed if we used card instead of paper.

There was a clear buzz in the classroom during the activity and it was great to see so many groups working so well together.

Well done P5/6