To celebrate the start of our 'Space Explorers' topic, Year 5 became astronauts for the day. After learning about the International Space Station, we received and emergency distress call from NASA - the astronauts on the ISS needed our help! Supplies were running low and we needed to devise a way to deliver safely in time!
Using string, balloons, cardboard, lollipop sticks (and anything else Captain Downes and Captain Louise could find in the resources room), our challenge was to transport a 50g weight a distance of 3 meters without assistance AND without it touching the ground (or flying off into space!) This was going to take some thought...! Working in teams, we researched, planned and built our prototypes. It was amazing how different they all looked when it came to testing! Although none of the systems were 100% successful, we definitely had fun!
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As part of our 'Brainwave' topic, we have been learning all about our brains and how they work. We discovered that there are 5 main sections to our brains; the frontal lobe, the temporal lobe, the occipital lobe, the parietal lobe and the cerebellum. We were really interested in how our brains compared to other animals so we did some research. We discovered that the human brain weighs 1,300-1,400g which is bigger than a gorilla or chimpanzee and WAY bigger than a cat! However, dolphins have even BIGGER brains, weighing around 1,700g! They are also an unusual shape.
To show the difference between these brains and the position of each lobe, we made our own brains out of salt dough. We then painted each lobe a different colour. Can you work out which brain belongs to which animal? What an exciting first day back! We have spent some time getting to know each other and learning all about ourselves. We started that day by having a 'snowball fight' using pieces of paper containing facts about ourselves. Once the 'snowballs' were well and truly mixed up, we worked in our house teams to work out who each snowball belonged to. It turns out that we know each other really well - especially Samet you guessed EVERY SINGLE snowball correctly! After that, we got to chill out and eat some MnMs. The only catch was, to eat the MnM, we had to tell a story/fact matching the colour e.g. red = something you did yesterday. It was worth it for the chocolate! We also worked together to develop a set of class rules which we feel will help us to create a positive learning environment. After break, we revisited our Schoolwide Learner Outcomes (SLOs). We discussed what each one meant and thought about how we can demonstrate each outcome. To put our thinking to the test, we had a House Team tower building competition! We had to work as a team to design and create the tallest tower possible out of spaghetti and blue tack! We knew that, to be a successful team, we would have to show each of the values. Below are pictures of our finished towers and some of the children's reflections on how they applied the SLOs to their learning: Critical Thinkers
'We had to figure out how to balance it.' 'We were creative, trying to think how to make it stand up.' 'When it fell, we didn't give up!' Effective Communicators 'We gave ideas to each other.' 'Abby was really good at listening to our ideas.' Socially Responsible 'We helped other tables tidy up.' Academically Successful 'Our tower stood up and was the tallest!' |
AuthorMy name is Rebecca Downes, I am the Year 5D teacher and author of this site. This is my second year teaching at Charter and my first year in Year 5! You can contact me via email at [email protected] ArchivesCategories |