1L South Parade

I missed the first part of the week due to sickness, but Mrs Sowter did a sterling job of looking after the class.

On my return on Thursday, I would have liked to have enjoyed my class, but I had to be a stern Victorian teacher! We had a great day experiencing what it was like to be a Victorian school child. It was very quiet and just a little bit boring to be a teacher. Some of the children liked the Victorian classroom because it was quiet, but some missed talking!

Thank you to everyone who helped dress their child up in Victorian type clothes, it really did feel like a Victorian school! Here are a selection of photos taken by Mrs Sowter and Mrs Haslam.

It was Red Nose Day on Friday, so we all dressed up as pirates.  Mr Lewis was the Captain and we earned gold coins for special work, we iced Red Nose Day cakes with Mrs Sowter, and listened to pirate stories.  We also enjoyed Mr Lewis’ second Birthday cake.  Here is a picture of us on the bridge of our ship, “The Golden Bell”.

Just a quick special thank you to all the children and adults who gave me a card or present for my birthday.  It really did make my day very special.  Here is a picture of the cake from 1L, Mrs Sowter and Mrs Smith (they download the picture from the blog; I knew it would be useful for something!)

On Thursday we had our Science Day.  We had a fantastic turn out and we hope you enjoyed it as much as we did (and that you brains didn’t hurt too much when trying to solve our two problems!)  It really was great to see everyone and made it a very special day for us all. We were investigating forces by making a pirate puppet, and floating and sinking by making a raft to save marooned pirates.

There were no right or wrong answers to our two problems.  The important thing was the investigation.  We learnt a lot about experimenting, by trying things and then testing them, modifying them and testing again. 

When building the rafts, we learnt that all of the materials floated, but some were better than others.  We found that sometimes we needed to use two or more materials to solve the problem.  We also found that we needed to make sure that the raft was stable when hit by waves, or the occupants have seat belts!

With the puppets, we learnt how important the position of the pivot was to make the forces move the arms and legs.  We learnt that the split pin needs to be loose enough to allow the two pieces of card to move.  We found out that the elastic band was not useful! Sometimes we have red herrings in science!

This week we took time off from time travelling for Science Week, but because it was Red Nose Day on Friday we had a pirate theme all week.  We have been investigating sight by looking at how we use semaphore (when you can’t or down’t want to be heard), made fruit smoothies to investigate taste and prevent scurvy (and used data to decide on the fruit to use), and investigated the best material for blocking a hole in a ship (it had to be water proof and strong).

We have been busy again!  We have finished learning about Native American Indian customs, and have errected our class group totem poles.  We have two in the corridor and two in the classroom.  We could only use five colours that the Native Americans would have used.

We also finished our dream catchers.  We think they look ace.  What do you think?