Last week, we were fortunate enough to go to Mountbatten School to record our voiceovers which form part of our performance. We cannot wait to share our exciting performance with you so we are putting lots of effort and energy into the last few weeks of rehearsals.
At the end of this half term, we applied out knowledge of poem learning to help us to recite a poem from The Lost Words. The Lost Words is a wonderful book of poems that we have been studying in Guided Reading. All of the poems are about nature and are about words that are being lost because they are not being used often enough. We focussed on using intonation and volume as well as our actions to make the performance of our poems as effective as possible.
Today we had a wonderful day in London visiting Parliament. Once we arrived, we were given a tour around the House of Commons, the House of Lords as well as the Queen’s Robing room and the oldest part of Parliament, Westminster Hall. We learnt about the different colours used in the different houses of Parliament as well as the different traditions that there are such as voting, the role of a speaker and a division.
Then we learnt about how a law is made and how the bill (the potential law) is ping ponged between the House of Commons and the House of Lords before then being signed by the Queen. We were also fortunate enough to meet our MP Caroline Nokes, who told us about life as an MP and answered our questions. She was very impressed with the questions we asked and it was a brilliant opportunity to learn more about the role of an MP.
We built on our enquiry from last week by exploring whether the temperature of the water affects the rate at which salt or sugar dissolves at. We found that the warmer the temperature of the water, the faster the salt or sugar dissolves. Our focus this week was on ensuring that our enquiry was fair and that we were measuring accurately. Next week, we will work on graphing our results as this will help us to interpret the results.
What a fantastic Friday afternoon! Gemma the Viking visited us once more so that she could see everybody’s house and boat designs before then deciding on her favourite house and boat.
I was so impressed with the time, care and effort that had gone into your house and boat designs. It was clear that everybody worked incredibly hard and this was shown in the detail, size and historical accuracy shown in every creation- you should all be very proud!
We will keep your creations in school for a little longer so that everyone else can enjoy them!
Congratulations to our 4 new owners of Master Scribes- we have all been working hard on our handwriting by making sure that our letters are joined consistently, our letter size is appropriate and we are thinking about capital letters and punctuation. If you are still working towards a Master Scribe, keep going, you are nearly there!
This week, we answered the question ‘Do all solids that we can pour, dissolve?’ We tested sand, instant coffee, filtered coffee, salt, sugar and flour ensuring that all other variables were kept to same so that we knew we were conducting a fair enquiry. We made predictions before beginning our enquiry, then tested each solid and wrote down our observations so that we had a clear record of our results.
Next week, we will be looking at whether the temperature of water affects how quickly or how much of a solid can be dissolved.
In science, we have begun a new topic exploring the 3 states of matter and how materials can change state. We started by grouping different materials based on their properties such as fluidity, absorbency or solubility. Some of the items we had, tested our ideas about solids, liquids and gases because, for example, you can pour salt which is like a liquid, but it is also has some of the properties of a solid.
We then went on to exploring these properties, how to test them and how molecules in each state of matter are organised.
We had an exciting visit today from Gemma the Viking who told us about the Viking house and boat that she needs to buy. Once we have created our designs, we will present them in the style of a Dragon’s Den and Gemma will choose her favourite house and boat design!
This afternoon, we began to look at who the Vikings were, where they came from and how they fit into what we already know about history.
Thank you so much for your wonderful cards and presents. I have had a fantastic term with you all and can’t wait to see what 2020 has in store for us. I hope that you all have a wonderful, restful break- you most certainly deserve it!
Our year as 5HE 