Well!! Can you believe it??? It’s December the 1^st already!! This is the day we decorate the classroom… much fun was had by all as you can see in these very exciting photos.

After determining the temperatures at which water changes state, we needed to look at the water cycle and how it works all around our planet. In literacy, we analysed explanations of the water cycle for structure and sentence types because we are writing our own explanations about phenomenon linked to the water cycle, for example: How do snowflakes form? How do rivers and water erode canyons? How are rainbows formed? We will publish some of these on the website when they are finished and typed up. In Geography, we have made 3D models of the water cycle using craft materials and we have been taking a rainfall measurement every day using rain gauges in the playground. Before we finish for Christmas, we will be working out the average rainfall across December…. We think it might be quite high this year!!! The photos below show our lovely 3D water cycle pictures.

Once we were confident knowing that everything we can see and feel takes one of the 3 states of matter (solid, liquid, gas) we started to think about how materials could change their state. It became apparent after discussion and research that materials change their state when the temperature changes; the water cycle is a perfect example of this since water is a material which changes from a solid to a liquid and then a gas within a temperature range that we can all feel.

Our next experiment was to find out the temperatures at which water becomes a solid and a gas. We used a kettle to boil water (Miss Heaton poured it out for us) and we had ice cubes and tap water too. The following photos show us measuring the temperature of the various mixtures to determine water’s boiling and freezing points. When we had finished, we wrote up our experiments independently. There is a write-up for you to look at below, which was done by Katie.

During the second week of this half term, our first set of experiments investigated the varying properties of solids, liquids and gases. We carefully carried out three different procedures to find out:

• If air has mass?
• Whether sand, salt, flour and sugar are solids or liquids?
• If liquids change volume when they change container?

Here are some of our diagrams and explanations to describe what we found. On the whole, we discovered that air particles do have mass and that a balloon filled with air is heavier than one without. We also found out that although sand and salt have some properties of liquids- they flow- they are in fact tiny particles of solids! Typically, we also noticed that the volume of a liquid does not change when it changes container; it takes the shape of whichever container it is poured into, however, the volume remains the same.

Since returning from our well-earned half-term break we have started our new topic ‘Super Scientists’. Although we will be predominately taking on the role of clever chemists throughout this half term, we will also be linking our learning across other areas of the curriculum. Our exciting programme of events incorporates the following: geography- the water cycle and weather patterns; history- local famous scientists; maths- addition and subtraction using real life examples from our topic work; science- states of matter and reversible and irreversible changes; D and T- making bread and in literacy, we will be writing: explanation texts, reports, discussions and diary entries. We will also be finding time to link this topic to our Eco objectives and will look at ways we can enhance the world as scientists. Next week we will be setting up rain gauges and engaging in lots of practical experiments so stay tuned for photo updates…….

This week, class 5 have been making their own compasses and using Google Maps to navigate around our region. We took inspiration from Da Vinci and his love of compasses for the initial design and carefully decorated the base of our compasses with permanent ink.

After that, we magnetised our needles using bar magnets, since we have also found out during this topic that the Earth’s core is almost like one giant bar magnet which causes the North and South Poles!

Finally, we took our compasses outside and tested them…. On the whole, we were excited to discover that our needles did head North, however, like all good scientists, we think we can improve some of the materials we used and will be trying them again with a different medium to thread the needle in (we are hoping this will improve the friction of the pivot so it floats better).

Would you like to make a compass at home? Check out our instructions and you can have a go yourselves. We have analysed instructions for structure and language features and planned and written our own.

During geography, we have been exploring our local area and finding out where Tameside is situated in our country. Using atlases, we have explored what it means to be part of the United Kingdom and located all of the British Isles. We are currently learning how to use compasses and will be making our own compasses too; then we will be able to try our hand at orienteering!! We will post instructions on how to make your own compasses at home soon… Check out the recent photos of our geography work.

In maths this half term, we have largely been developing our skills in place value and coming to understand in more detail the base ten system. We have learned how to confidently read and write numbers up to a million whilst being able to explain the place value of each digit. In particular, we have been finding out about decimal numbers and their fraction equivalents. We have been discovering that decimal fractions are parts of a whole and can now think more carefully about the sizes of the ‘parts’ whilst we are identifying the place value of these digits to order and compare them. Overall, we have discovered that the equivalence symbol is very important to help us understand number sentences and the ‘sizes’ of numbers. We can use inequality symbols to compare and order numbers too. We will be using these skills in mental and written addition and subtraction after half term as part of our new ‘Mastery approach’.

We have now finished our biographies and have typed some of them up for you to enjoy. You can see from the photographs below that we analysed structure and vocabulary to help us complete vivid writing. In addition, we have met a number of success criteria which have developed our knowledge of sentence types and punctuation between clauses. Very soon, we will post the wonderful art work we have created for our ‘Icons’ project. In fact, we are having an exhibition of our work very soon and Gordon Clegg is coming to look at what we have achieved following our inspirational trip to his studio.

Art Trip to Mossley