Friday 16th June

Home Learning

This week more of you will find that you are receiving your home learning in stapled packs. This is because some of you have filled up your home learning books and there is no more room for me to stick your tasks in. If you have filled up your home learning book (well done) this is how you will receive your home learning for the rest of this school year. 

English: This week for your English I have given you a task based on Mr Stink. The sheet will be in either your home learning book or your pack, follow the instructions on it to complete your English task.
 

Maths: For Maths this week I have given you another problem in your home learning book or pack. Read the problem and see if you can work out some solutions. Don’t forget to check that your answers make sense when you read the question again.

What we have done this week

In Tuesday’s Science lesson we started by playing a game where we put our heads down and our thumbs up, sitting at our tables, and when Mr Balls wiggled our thumbs we had to knock gently on the table. When we did this the rest of the class had to keep their heads down and their eyes closed but using one hand they had to point in the direction the knocking sound was coming from. When the class opened their eyes they saw they were all pointing in the same direction and so we asked the question ‘how did we all know where to point?’ To know this we were going to have to learn what sound is. 

In our next activity, in groups, we touched a vibrating tuning fork against the top of a container filled with water. When we did this the vibration form the tuning fork created a ripple effect on the water’s surface. Mr Balls explained to us that this is how sound travels, by causing the particles around the vibrating source to vibrate, which in turn vibrate other particles, sending a ripple away from the vibrating sound source. We then watched a video which told us that even though we usually hear sound that has travelled through air, it can also travel through solids and liquids as well.

For our main activity, in pairs, we followed an instruction sheet on how to make string telephones. Once we had made them we tested them out in lots of different ways investigating questions like ‘Does the telephone work around corners?’, ‘What happens if you tie a knot in the middle of it?’ and ‘What difference does it make if you make the string telephone shorter?’. We then drew a labelled diagram of our string telephones and an explanation of how we think they work. 

Finally on Tuesday we went out onto the playground and turned our back to Mr Balls as we all stood in a line. Mr Balls then played a beat on his drum and we had to clap that same beat back to him before taking ten steps further away from Mr Balls and the drum. Mr Balls kept playing a different beat each time and we had to keep clapping it back to him, but it got harder the further away we got. Our question was then ‘Why the drum beat is harder to hear from further away?’ Mr Balls told us to think again about the ripples in the water at the start of our lesson and how they were getting fainter the further away they got from the vibrating tuning fork. He said the same thing was happening with the vibrating beat of the drum and the air. The further away we got from the drum beat the more air the vibrations had to ripple through in order to reach our ears.