I have created us an account on Oxford reading owls. You can access books suited to our year group for free.
Go on the Oxford Owl website by clicking this link: https://www.oxfordowl.co.uk/for-home/find-a-book/library-page/
Once you are on the website, click on My class login, it’s right at the top of the page so you won’t miss it.
Next, you will have to enter the login details, they are
Username: birdwellyear4
Password: Read
(Don’t forget the capital R in Read)
Dear Parents and carers,
To support you during these difficult and challenging times the following link below is a new BBC Bitesize primary planner. A ten minute daily Podcast commencing on the 20th April covering the National Curriculum and links to other useful resources. This will also cover some elements of how to cope during these challenging times. This is available on BBC sounds via the web or via the BBC sounds App.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p089l43b
Thank you and stay safe.
Mr Bailey
This week, we would normally be starting our new topic:
So Mr. Mathieson and I thought it would be a good idea to find out about what life was like in the Stone Age. What did our ancient ancestors wear, eat and shelter in? Are they really like they are portrayed in films? Hairy and strong, wearing fur and hitting things with clubs? When was the Stone Age? Why was it called the Stone age? What was the world like back then?
This is a rule that we covered in Spring Term 1 but it is one I like to revisit. All of these spelling patterns sound like they say “SHUN” at the end of words but they are spelled a variety of ways:
Can you remember one of the ways we can spot which pattern to use? That’s right, the root word can give us a clue in the way that it is spelled. For example:
Root word: Suffix:
Try to identify the root word for each of these spellings that fit our rule:
Are there any it doesn’t work for or that you have to be careful of? Watch out for that tricky double SS suffix!!!!
Take a look, it’s amazing…
[embeddoc url=”https://birdwellyear4.edublogs.org/files/2020/04/lks2-my-family.pdf” download=”all” viewer=”google” ]
The task this week will take you all week if you are going to do it properly. We are going to produce a piece of creative writing GOOD ENOUGH TO GO IN YOUR WRITING ASSESSMENT FOLDERS!!!!! That’s right, best writing at home!
Now to get to this best piece, we are going to learn different stages (like we would do in class). Then it will be your job on Friday to put the pieces back together independently in one piece of writing.
I shall add the next step each day…
The Lady of Shalott ends with the death of the eponymous Lady. This type of ending is known as a tragedy. (A sad ending, where people die or do not get what they deserve.) It is also implicit (this means it doesn’t explain why or how the story really ends, you have to guess certain bits, like ‘Why was she cursed?’) This is a very unusual type of ending for a school text but very important to learn about, as sad and scary texts are very good at engaging us emotionally and involving us in the story. Here are some other types of ending, can you apply them to our poem? How would the story have turned out with these different types of ending? (I’ve done one for you, can you give your own twist and explain the rest? you can work with a grown-up)
Twist: It turns out that Lancelot was the one who imprisoned her in the tower and reveals this when he sees her float down to Camelot!!!
Happy ending:
Explicit: (You reveal all the details and explain everything)
The long view (What are the characters’ lives like in years to come?)
The cliff-hanger! (Something happens at the end that leaves us in suspense, the story ends with us dying to know what will happen next!)
So, come up with your own version of each and apply it to the Lady of Shalott. Then, research (ask friends and family) and create a list of stories, books, films or poems which fit into each category. these will help us structure the ending you choose to go for on Friday.
Here is a link to a video of the story in case you’ve forgotten the poem!
Plus a (very simple) storyboard
Today’s learning is all about figurative language. As we know from reading the poem, Tennyson was amazing at using detailed description to paint a picture. For example, instead of saying, ‘winter is coming, he tells us, “willows whiten, aspens quiver.” He is getting us to understand what he is tellings us by giving us clues and painting a picture. We can do the same trick…if I tell you:
“As I stepped out of the door, I shielded my eyes with my hand and squinted, trying to make out the shapes outside. By the end of the street, I had already begun to perspire a little and my new flip flops were blistering my feet.
Can you use the same trick to paint a picture of:
Remember, give clues, don’t tell us what you are doing.
now I want us to work on a grammar skill that we have already visited in class. We are going to use a subordinate clause to add extra information to a sentence. We are going to separate the main clause from the subordinate clause with a comma. like this…
Main clause , Subordinate clause
Mr Swallow forgot to post our challenge, he is getting very old and forgetful.
Subordinate clause , Main clause
Due to the nice weather, I went for a game of football in the garden.
So the main clause is the important information and the subordinate clause adds extra detail. We separate the two with a comma. The subordinate clause can come at the beginning, the end or even in the middle:
Main clause , Subordinate clause , Main clause
I got in and immediately, because of the lockdown, washed my hands thoroughly.
Try out this skill with some sentences of your own. Vary the position of the subordinate clause and remember to separate it from the main clause using a comma.
most importantly, post up your writing so I can read it 😁
This is a very difficult concept to work with but day 1 is nice and simple, it teaches you to think of decimals as 1 whole broken into 100 pieces (like 100th in fractions). Follow the link and watch the video tutorial first.
There is even a Flashback 4 (watch out, question 1 is tricky!)
Let me know how you all get on.
ANSWERS NOW IN…
[embeddoc url=”https://birdwellyear4.edublogs.org/files/2020/04/Homophone-test-1.docx” download=”all” viewer=”google” ]
Mrs O’Neill has seen that we are working on homophones and set you an online challenge…it goes pretty fast so you should probably pause it when each pair of pictures pops up to give you time to guess the homophone and write both versions down in your home school book. Then you can press play again to see if you got it right!
Good luck
What do you think Year 4?
The last week we did spellings, we investigated common homophones that we tend to mix up.
Here is a reminder for you to test yourselves on:
What others can you think of? Can you come up with ways of remembering which one is which (remember when we drew a tree on a hill in “where”, as it’s the only one with a “h” and it’s a place?)
I will put a test for you to do and the answers later in the week!
The white Rose maths scheme especially for working from home changes every week. It covers EXACTLY what we would be learning about in school.
This week is looking at dividing by 10 and diving by 100. It is building up to learning about decimal numbers.
Watch the video first and then try the questions in your working-from-home book.
It is weird being in school without you all, I’m missing you guys keeping me on my toes!!!
Keep letting me know what you get up to!
One of the things we were going to learn about in school was, “What was life like living in a castle?”
Your challenge is to find out about and imagine what life would be like for you if you were a real-life knight/lady/lord/servant who lived in a castle. What jobs would you do in a day? What would it feel like? Cold? Smelly? Use all of your senses! Who would you see?
You could present your work as a diary, a picture or a fact file. I’m sure you will come up with something I’ve not thought of!
I would also like to make your own castle…it sounds like the nation will soon have lots and lots of toilet roll tubes going spare! Or cornflake packets! It could even just be made from a page in your book. Let’s see who can make the best!
Mr Swallow
We have seen the rainbows people have been making to cheer everyone up. We had a lovely break on the field and decided to make our own rainbow out of the materials we could find around us.
Mr. Matheison and I are going to be giving you all a call at home today to see how you are all getting on (and to see if you are behaving for your parents!!!!) Let us know what you are up to and what you have planned.
Thank you so much to all of you who have posted up your work and your activities at home, I have really enjoyed reading through them all. I’m missing you guys and it is VERY weird being in school without you all!
We don’t want your brains turning to mush at home with too much TV or X Box! To keep yourself busy during this unusual period, try to do a little school-work every day.
As we are constantly posting new content onto the blog, it can be difficult to keep track of the different tasks set and the online activities you can try so I’ve created this sticky post (that just means it will always stay at the top of the posts) to help us keep track of everything. As we add new challenges or activities, I will update them here.
A guide to posting on the blog:
Challenges (NEW TOPIC)
Online activities:
However, it is equally important to spend time with your family, get outside when you can, bake, draw, paint and all the other things that are fun ways to spend your time doing! We don’t know how long this way of working will last but let’s make the most of it!
Take care of yourselves and keep posting what you get up to at home!!!
We have learned a little about Sir Lancelot and a few of the other knights of the round table in class.
Here is the quote from, “Tales of Brave Adventure”, that we read from in school:
The Knights of the Round Table were characters in the legends about King Arthur. They were the best knights in King Arthur’s kingdom, and lived in King Arthur’s castle, Camelot. They were called the Knights of the Round Table because of a special table that was in Camelot, that was round instead of rectangular. This meant that everyone who sat around it was seen as equal.
In order to become a Knight of the Round Table, a knight had to prove he was chivalrous (honourable) enough. In the legend, the knights swore a Code of Chivalry, which is much like an oath is today. This meant that they promised to uphold the rules given to them once they became a Knight of the Round Table.
Can you find out more about the knights and what their code of honour was? You could write a set of rules for knights to follow for our class, so we all know how to be honourable and treat one-another with respect! Can you make your knightly code look like an ancient scroll? Or could you post a picture of you and your scroll looking knightly and chivalrous? (You could use; serious expressions, cardboard cornflake packet swords and bedsheet capes guys!)
We applied the pencil and ink line drawing techniques we learned in unit 1 to create our own portrait of Sir Lancelot, the heroic knight of the round table.
We let ourselves go crazy with sketching pencil, putting as many lines on the page as we wanted and re-doing lines that were not quite right over and over again. When we were happy, we switched to ink and picked out only the best of the pencil lines, removing the rest with a rubber.
We used a combination of coloured pencil and coloured ink to create areas of light and shade in the portrait and then added bright highlights by removing patches of colour with the rubber (we wanted Lancelot’s sword and armour to glisten in the sun like it does in our poem!)
Then we got all digital…
Mr Swallow took photos of all of our art using an SLR camera. We used several steps to then manipulate this image:
Phew! WE ARE GOOD!
We applied the pencil and ink line drawing techniques we learned in unit 1 to create our own portrait of Sir Lancelot, the heroic knight of the round table.
We let ourselves go crazy with sketching pencil, putting as many lines on the page as we wanted and re-doing lines that were not quite right over and over again. When we were happy, we switched to ink and picked out only the best of the pencil lines, removing the rest with a rubber.
We used a combination of coloured pencil and coloured ink to create areas of light and shade in the portrait and then added bright highlights by removing patches of colour with the rubber (we wanted Lancelot’s sword and armour to glisten in the sun like it does in our poem!)
Then we got all digital…
Mr Swallow took photos of all of our art using an SLR camera. We used several steps to then manipulate this image:
Phew! WE ARE GOOD!
Hopefully some rather snazzy designer handbags made their way home to our hard-working mums and carers!
We certainly got through the good pens and glittery bits and bobs making them…
The team who we buy our maths scheme and resources from have launched a free, Working-at-home web service for all of our pupils and parents to use. There is an activity a day linked exactly to your age and point in school and video tutorials to teach you how to do it too! I’ll be out of a job at this rate!
Click the link to visit the page:
https://whiterosemaths.com/homelearning/year-4/
Please bear in mind that the website is getting a HUGE amount of traffic during the day so it may be better to access the site at night and download the resources to use the following day.
Hi kids. Today is our first day of working from home. I hope you are all behaving and helping out at home. I’ve added a copy of the planning for our lady of Shalott topic so you can see what else we would have been doing in school.
All of the teachers will be logging on to their blogs and setting challenges and seeing what you have all been up to. It is really important that we all stay in touch so remember to add posts showing us all your work.
Don’t forget, there are links to sites that school has subscribed to inside the cover of your work-from-home book, along with your usernames and passwords. I’ve added a link from the White Rose maths scheme we follow so you can try out activities in the same way you are used to working in school. It’s the last activity page from the block of fractions we have just been working on in class. Click the link below…
Y4-Spring-Block-3-PPT10-Calculate-quantities-2019 (2)
Take care and talk to you all soon.
Mr Swallow
We looked at songs with stories in them today (just in case you were wondering why your child has come home humming obscure 60s American folk rock…sorry)!
We also shared books with Year 3, designed and laminated bookmarks and listened to a whole school story with Mr Bailey while chillin’ (is that how you say it kids?) in our jammies.
Was it sticky enough to stick Brigg’s mouth together? Well…some were! We were amazed at how we could all start with the same recipe and ingredients and make such different trays of parkin!!!
They all had one thing in common…they were gorgeous!!! (No, really!) So we sat, reading Danny the Champion of the World and munching parkin…life was good in Year 4 this aft’!
We read a great story in our Yorkshire Folktales book. The legend told us how Filey Brigg was created when Brigg the dragon was tricked into eating a huge bowl of sticky Yorkshire parkin and drowned in the sea!
At the end of the story was a recipe for parkin, well…we just had to make some didn’t we?
We have been learning about stereotypes. That is the phrase we use to describe it when someone is assumed to have certain characteristics just because of things like where they are born, the colour of their hair or the sport they play.
We looked for examples in books; ‘The Troll and Room on the Broom, by Julia Donaldson. We found that the main characters in both books fitted into what we expect trolls and witches to look and act like but that both characters actually acted very differently to how they looked. We asked clever questions like, “Is a troll still a troll if he doesn’t live under a bridge?” “Are witches still magic without their wands?” “Is it fair to expect all trolls to be mean?”
We found out that there are certain stereotypes for people who come from Yorkshire!!!! Just look at the first set of images that appear if you google, “Yorkshireman”
As India pointed out, even the saying is inaccurate as she is a proud “Yorkshirewoman”! We looked around our class and we didn’t see one child in a flat cap or wearing a tweed jacket. So we investigated further and found all sorts of sayings or misconceptions related to being from barnsley and Yorkshire:
We had a lot of fun learning broad Barnsley phrases and sayings because it is important to be proud of our culture and heritage…Miss Buckley jumped a mile when we asked her to “put t’ wood int’ ‘oil” as she entered the classroom! However, we realized that all of these stereotypes didn’t accurately describe the lovely Yorkshire pupils in our class. So, we did what everyone should do when faced with out-dated, stereotypical views…we made fun of it!
We decided to see what it would look like if we did all wear flat caps, tweed and pipes. Or curlers in our hair like Nora Batty! What would we look like walking a whippet and flying a kestrel while supping a pot of Yorkshire tea??? Tune in next week to see the results…
We have been writing adverts for Birdwell businesses to accompany our local maps. For a bit of fun, we thought we would imagine what sort of business we would like to open in Birdwell.
Well! The children did not disappoint. If ever you need a new name for your business, come and talk to Year 4. they came up with absolute gems such as:
To go along with these fledgling businesses, we wrote adverts. Oliver even took this idea to the extreme by writing his own fictional news account at home. Telling us how one of the creatures from Ollie’s Reptile House, escapes and gets into school. (Although I did find the unprovoked biting of my bottom in the article to be unreasonable journalistic embellishment!!!)
stay tuned to see what the children have created in their own time…
We used our local walk to redraw the ariel map of Birdwell as it actually is now…
We also learned some 3D drawing techniques to draw some of the places we saw from a ‘Street View’ perspective…Mr Swallow showed us how to use “vanishing points” (thats posh for 2 dots on the paper) and straight lines to draw buildings that got bigger as they got closer or smaller as they got further away.
We tried the technique ourselves and they are amazing for a first go at isometric drawing
We took to the streets to investigate the differences between the ariel photographs of Birdwell that we have studied and the real Birdwell. We spotted new houses that have been built, new businesses such as Aldi that have opened as well as the whole new commercial development near the motorway.
We mapped out the changes and took plenty of photographs as we went so we could make our own, up to date ariel maps of the village.
It was a bitterly cold day but we really enjoyed exploring. We even had time to try our luck for a cup of tea at Charlie’s house! What we noticed is that there are far more businesses in Birdwell than we realized and also that do live in a wonderfully green and natural location.
Stay tuned to see our Birdwell maps…
As part of our topic, we have used a range of maps and atlas. Next, we are going to see what Birdwell looks like from space using ariel photographs.
Can we use them to find our way around and describe what we can see? Are the photos and up to date representation of our village? Can we improve them?
Click the link to see BIRDWELL FROM SPACE…
Monday afternoon is our library session. It was lovely to see the children enjoying the new books and reading together. REMEMBER TO BRING YOUR OLD TO TO EXCHANGE EVERY MONDAY KIDS!!!!
We made lots of wonderful crafts to sell at the Christmas Market. Thank you so much to all of the wonderful parents and family who came and bought our work. The fair made lots of money which helps pay for all the wonderful craft materials we use throughout the year!
Thank you!
Our stained glass windows are up in the classroom. Each window represents a scene from The Lion, The witch and The Wardrobe. Just like the Easter Iconography we investigated, the images convey ideas and themes from the story…
Can you see the window that is half Aslan and half Edmund on the stone table? This represents the idea that Aslan sacrificed himself for Edmund!
How about the scene showing Aslan’s resurrection. The sun symbolically shining on the new day/new life?
Several children split their depiction of the White Witch in half, representing the 2 sides to her character!
Very deep thinking everyone, well done!
We compared the Easter story to our class book. We noticed very similar themes and ideas in both Narnia and ancient Jerusalem! (Hopefully, this explains why I am covering the Easter story with the children in November!!!!)
We saw that the central theme of the story is one of sacrifice for people in your care. We saw that this sacrifice led to the resurrection because people had faith in their ‘hero’. We even saw similarities in the locations of the story and the way in which the hero died!
The kids were brilliant at spotting these links and created a booklet comparing the 2 stories!
We looked at icons that told the Easter story. The pictures all had a similar style. We noticed that:
we decided to use this style to create our own representation of a scene from the Easter story.
Year 3 and 4 are performing these songs in our Christmas production (although we’ve changed the lyrics to the Micheal Buble’ song EVER SO SLIGHTLY!)
Give them a go at home kids…
and our own lyrics are here, click the link…
It’s beginning to look a lot like christmas (Barnsley version)
We had a few fun activities yesterday to raises money for children in need…
we came to school in PJs and onesies to celebrate the special day.
Then, we joined in the National Joe Wickes Exercise event, streamed live from the BBC…
(that’s a cool-down BTW, not that we are really tired!!!!)
Then we had lots of fun inventing silly fundraising ideas for Mr Bailey to have a go at…
The ideas included; throwing slime at him; dressing him in drap /make-up and taking selfies with him; making him do our homework; making him stay outside all day on play duty (with no coat according to Noah 😉) and a sponsored dunk into the swimming pool at Hoyland! Obviously, as class teacher, I support each one of these wonderful suggestions from my clever pupils!!
Well done kids, you made yesterday lots of fun and we contributed to the £185 raised by school!!
we have been learning skills that help us present our arguments clearly and debate others’ point of view. We practiced in class, using our skills to debate important issues, such as: Should we have to wear a school uniform? Should we have homework? Should we begin the school day earlier or later?
The children split into 2 teams to decide on what their arguments should be and then debate the issue with the other team.
The skills were:
Hopefully, these phrases may sound familiar to our parents because our homework is to go home and win an argument (or friendly debate) using our new-found powers of persuasion!
So if your dinner conversation tonight begins with, “Mum, I really appreciate you want me to eat healthily and that’s because you care, but…” then don’t worry…your child is just doing their homework!
Our new Unit is all about persuasion and influence. We have begun by looking at the way Propaganda Posters were used in WW2 to influence people’s attitudes and opinions. We looked at the tricks that the poster makers had used and pinched them to use in posters of our own.
We split into 2 groups…1 group who wanted people to rise up against the White Witch (by making her seem either evil or incompetent and easy to beat) and 1 group who were on the side of the White Witch (and therefore either wanted to make the Witch look good or make her enemies look foolish). See if you can spot the ways we have tried to influence you…
OK! So we need to break the evil spell and free ourselves from the hot chocolate enchantment. To do this, we have to remove the hot chocolate from the water!!!
We split into teams and designed a scientific experiment to see if we could do this.
Each team decided on the equipment they would use and the method in which they would use it.
We planned this out on paper and carried out the experiments…
We want our topic book covers to feel as if you can open them and step into Narnia. To create the wintery landscape inside, we learned a new skill.
We used extremely light, pastel shades to create a pale, wintry sky and snowscape. We then contrasted this with black ink trees and a lamp post in the foreground. It was interesting seeing all of the different techniques we had to use to create this simple effect.
We worked with Year 3 on the iPads. We looked at pictures on wintery landscapes and added amazing vocabulary to the pictures by tapping the screen and recording our voices as sound buttons.
We first thought about what we could see, then what we could hear and finally, what we could feel. Working together and collaborating was a great way of sharing good ideas and vocabulary. We use a separate picture for each of these senses.
When it came time to write, we could keep the iPad on our table and press the buttons on the screen to remind us of those lovely ideas and phrases we had used. As we had recorded a different sense on each screen, this helped us paragraph our work, making sure that each paragraph focussed upon one of those senses.
This really supported our youngest writers as they had a simple guide to follow. Similarly, it challenged our more able writers as they were able to play with the order of the paragraphs and the effect this had on their writing.
Here is a preview of what we shall be learning about during our new topic: Into the Wardrobe!!!
Year 5 have coded their own games on Scratch so we went to have a look and learn how to do it for ourselves.
Mr Swallow and his team gave us a crash course in coding basics and in no time at all we were moving characters around the screen, changing them colour and all sorts of clever things.
We then had a go at controlling a sprite on the screen using just a bunch of 🥕 carrots!!!!!! (Ask us about how it worked)
Well done to the English “Pommies” for winning our own version of the Ashes. There were only 3 runs difference in the final score and only 1 run separates the teams over their 3 matches!!!!!
it didn’t seem fair to only give 1 team their “Ashes” trophy full of ice pops so wee all had a walk to the shop for some!!!
We had to accurately measure the circumference of our partner’s head, using a tape measure. We then had to transfer this measurement to a long strip of cardboard and then measure 20cm intervals along it to make sure that the hat would be the correct height. After that, we had to rebate 5cm at both the top and bottom. This gave us a line to work to snip and fold back little sticky tabs for adding the brim and the top!
We found that the more accurately we worked, the easier the project was to put together! It also gave us plenty of practice using our scissor skills and made us work together as a team because some of the stages needed 3 hands!!!
Leave us a comment to tell us what you think!
We have split the class into “Aussies” and “Pommies” and we are playing a 2-day test match for the Ashes trophy. The real Ashes are the burnt remains of the original wicket…we didn’t fancy playing for that so our ashes trophy is filled with sweets instead!
Our ‘friendly’ practice match was won by the Aussies by just 1 run! Team captain, Elliot, led his team onto the wicket and made sure they all shook hands with the English team. Both sides are keen to get on with the test match and see who will win the trophy full of sweets!
As Year 4 walked into the classroom this morning, they were presented with a map of Europe with the outline of Australia overlayed on top. This was to try and show the sheer size of the country we are learning about. Working collaboratively in teams, they had to add place names from both Europe and Australia, where the maps overlapped.
We then turned these locations (the “Facts”) into comparative sentences (the “Fancy”). This is a very tricky task and the children enjoyed being able to do something so grown up!
We turned “Fact” into “Fancy” right there and then in the lesson, starting from just a blank map!
Boom! (As you children apparently say????)
We realised that we could get an awful lot of particles, in our mixture, out of the water through sieving and filtering. However, no matter how careful we were and how fine a filter we used, the water would not come clean and clear.
Mr Swallow introduced us to the concept of mixtures and solutions. Mixtures can be separated by filtering BUT solutions can’t. Therefore, the dirty water left in our cups after all that sieving MUST be a solution!!!
Mr Swallow challenged us to come up with an experiment to separate the solution and finally purify the water. We brainstormed all the things we could do to a liquid, we came up with: pour it (done that), shake it (done that), drink it (errr!!!!), soak it up (good idea), heat it up, cool it down or add something to it.
Each team chose which approach to take and planned their experiment. Mr Swallow ran around school and popped to the shop at lunch to get all the equipment we needed and off we went. Investigating whether our idea would separate the solution or not…
Some teams soaked up the water with a sponge or kitchen roll, then squeezed it out to see if that would separate the solution…it didn’t.
Some teams added chemicals, such as Milton, hand sanitizer or washing up liquid, to see if that would work. It probably killed off any germs but we still wouldn’t want to drink it!
Some teams cooled down the solution by freezing it in an ice cube tray or adding ice to it to “grab” the particles (nice idea as it works with salt if you put too much in your cooking!). It didn’t work here though!
The final team opted for heating the solution. They boiled it in a pan on Mr Swallow’s camping stove and as the liquid evaporated into steam, they collected it in half of a bottle (with Mr Swallow’s help and his oven gloves!!!), where it condensed back into clean, clear water! success! In order to separate the water from the solution, we had to turn it into a vapour and then back to a liquid.
Well done everyone, we may just survive this journey after all!
This morning, Year 4 had a very tricky challenge! We have found out that our water supply on board ship has been contaminated. We need to purify the water so that we can survive the journey.
Mr Swallow got out a bunch of containers, sieves, funnels, colanders, cups cloth and other things and asked us to choose any equipment we wanted for our team. We then had to come up with our own plan about how to use it! What equipment should we use? How should we use it? What order should we use it in? Our teams discussed what to do and came up with a plan!
Down on the field, we experimented with the equipment to try and remove all the horrid things from our cup of water, to make it safe enough to drink!
Some of them worked better than others!
We looked at how the team who had got the cleanest water had done that worked well. They had:
used the filters with the biggest holes first, to get rid of any big particles and not clog up their filter.
worked methodically from large hole filter down to smallest.
worked really carefully, keeping equipment clean and not re-using dirty containers.
Worked patiently, pouring slowly so they didn’t lose any water and giving the water plenty of time to drain through the sieves and muslin.
We all adopted their way of working and our results improved dramatically!!!
We have used a 3D design program called Sketch Up to make models of the Opera House and Harbour Bridge in Sydney! It is really tricky to work in 3D because you have to rotate the model to work on different parts and sometimes the program tries to “guess” what you are trying to do and help but gets it wrong so you have to find a different way of solving the problem!
Sketch up is free to use on a laptop or PC at home if you sign up for it. To have a go, visit:
https://app.sketchup.com/app?hl=en
Take a look at what we have designed so far:
The Harbour Bridge by Isla & Lucy
We have had to learn lots of new skills and knowledge to be able to do this:
We are creating ink drawings of ourselves in character onboard a prison ship, in the First Fleet on its way to Australia.
This morning we had to add post-it notes to show how our characters would be feeling. Were they missing home? How was life onboard ship making them feel? What were they scared of? What would Australia be like when they got there? They look great…
We now need to use those post-it note feelings in our diary writing!
We had to work in small teams to decide if some statements about Australia were true or false. the purpose of the activity was to let me see how much the class already know and spot any misunderstandings they had. The purpose was also to discuss your opinions with your partners and justify your point of view. Later in the topic, we shall have a chance to revisit this work and see if there are any statements we would change our mind about.
New topic and new teacher! For any parents who have not met me yet, my name is Mr swallow and I shall be working with this class for the rest of this academic year and all the way through Year 5.
Our first topic together is all about Australia…or more specifically ‘”Surviving Australia!”
Here is our planning outline so you and the kids can see what is coming up this half term. Hopefully, this will help you understand what we are doing about in class and help you ask your child about what they’ve been up to!
Maxine is proud of her puddings, Reception class are recapping their tricky phonics sounds, Year 1 are doing amazing maths, Year 2 are working in their Maths Challenge books whilst Miss Millington videos them doing their Times table Shootouts, Year 3 are writing in their new Remarkable Writing books, Year 4 are performing movement routines in the hall, Year 5 are in Barnsley on a school visit and Year 6 are learning to teach Mr Swallow how to order large beer in German!
Just a typical end to our week at Birdwell School.
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