We had a fantastic science problem to solve.

Deep in the ice caves of Antarctica, live the Ice Trolls. They love the freezing cold!

The Ice Trolls would love to visit us at school but there is a problem! 
Can you guess what it might be? Mrs Hunter set us a challenge to design coats for the Ice Trolls to keep them frozen! We had to remember what we have already learnt about materials.

Sometimes we wrap things up to keep them safe or warm and sometimes we wrap things up to keep them cool.

Which 4 materials should we choose to test? We chose paper, felt, plastic and foil

We talked about how we could make it a fair test. We decided that all the materials needed to be the same size, we should not touch the ice trolls and the materials need to be tested for the same amount of time.

After 10 minutes we noticed that the ice pops wrapped in paper and plastic were melting. The Ice Trolls wrapped in foil and plastic were still frozen. We have learnt that some materials help to keep the cold in and the warm air out.

We have been using pastels to create our own pictures of The Great Fire of London. We learnt how to create strong and light colours and blend the pastels to mix the colours.

We have been looking at different properties of materials in science. We conducted an experiment to find out which material would make the best shield for a knight. The children had to test the different shields to identify its properties. They then thought about what properties a shield would need to have and used the results from the experiments to say which material suited these properties the best.

We concluded that the best material to use to make a shield would be the wood because it was strong, rigid, hard and waterproof, The children thought the worst material to use would be paper because it was weak, floppy and fell apart when it got wet, 

We have been looking at London in 1666 and comparing it to London now. Lots of children have been busy creating the different attractions and buildings in London. Your challenge is to try to build Buckingham Palace or the Houses of Parliament. Reuben has already made the London Eye and then created Big Ben. Cillian created Big Ben too and also make a Tudor house for our London Then display.

This weeks stars of the week have been very patient waiting for their turn but they deserve to be my stars because they work so hard always trying their best. They are always sharing their ideas as well as listening to others. Keep up the hard work.

Some children have been baking again at home and we all enjoyed the delicious treats in between learning our Great Fire of London dance, retelling the story using our story maps and creating our own Tudor houses. Oliver made delicious chocolate chip cakes, Lara a scrumptious sponge cake and Daniel made ginger cake. We are so lucky having all these delicious treats.

We have been learning lots more about Materials in our Science lessons this week.

We looked at a tray of different materials and talked about what we could do to them to change them. We then thought of some words to describe what happened to the materials. We came up with some fantastic words- squashed, stretched, bent etc We then thought about the properties of the materials- what makes each material special.

We took part in an investigation to see how strong four different materials were. We used card, wood, metal and plastic and added a 100 gram weight to the end of each. We talked about it being a fair test and made sure the rulers were the same length, we used the same weight and put them right at the end and we used the same amount of sellotape. We all make a prediction before the investigation started. We saw that the metal ruler did not bend at all and measure how much the others ruler bent in cm's writing out results in a chart and then drawing our own bar charts.

The investigation made us think that metal is a strong material as it did not bend with a 100 gram weight. We will try it next time with a heavier weight.

Look at some of the amazing things we have done for our extra homework this week.

Amelia C has created The Great Fire of London. This is fantastic.

Reuben has made The London Eye. I bet this was really tricky Reuben. What a great construction.

Maisie has made small cakes from 1666. They look delicious.

Matthew has baked banana and chocolate loaf. I can't wait to taste it.

Cillian has created an amazing house from 1666 and it looks like the fire is about to burn it down!

He has used 2D shapes to create a 3D structure.

Brooke C has been working hard at home to create her own puppet theatre. Her characters move as they are on sticks. Look at the different materials she had used to create her scenery.
Well done Brooke it is amazing.

We had four star learners this week as we missed doing it last Friday. Well done to 

you all. You are working so hard, thinking and developing your ideas, listening to magpie ideas off others and being eager and excited to learn.

Well done to all the KS1 children our performance of The Puzzled Penguin was amazing. You all worked really hard learning your lines, the songs and all of the actions. The costumes looked fantastic and lots of people have said how good they thought it was. Well done St. Chad's superstars.

In English lessons this week we have been looking at poems. We looked at a virtual firework display on the board and used adjectives to describe what the fireworks looked like. We then thought about what the fireworks were doing and created our own verb brainstorms.

We read different  firework poems and talked about the features, for example, rhyming words, repetition etc. We completed some poems with missing words and then learnt it off by heart. We then wrote a firework poem as a whole class before writing our own. The poem on the thinking mat says-

The fireworks are zooming fast, up in the air.

The fireworks are popping like bubbles.

The fireworks are exploding like a volcano.

We have been reading different versions of the story George and the Dragon. We created our own puppets and in partners used these to tell the story in our own words. We are learning to use expression in our voice and we are trying to use different voices for different characters.

Our production of The Puzzled Penguin is on Tuesday and Wednesday this week. You do not need a ticket but space is limited so we ask that only parents and grandparents come to watch and for only one performance. Don't forget to order a DVD of the show at £5 each to show family and friends our little stars!

We have had lots of fun learning to add adjectives and similes into our writing to make it more exciting and interesting. We used TASC to help us to think and develop our ideas. Our challenge was to create a monster, the only rules were that it had to be able to be held in one hand, the playdoh had to be shared between three children and the monsters should all look different, just like people are all different. The children all chose their own materials and spent time creating their monsters adding and changing things as their design developed.Look at some of our creations!

We then created our own Monster Land. We had to use our imaginations and create a land where the monster could live, find food, sleep, learn  and have fun. We added captions using adjectives to explain our designs.

What super stars this week always listening, thinking and trying their best as well as looking our for and helping others in the class. 

It is British Values week. We have been very busy learning about The British Isles and the countries in it. We have also been challenged to learn the capital cities in each of the countries. We have taken part in lots of different activities and love our interactive where we can practice our new geography skills.

We have had lots of discussion about our values and concerns for ourselves and others. We have talked about right and wrong and the need for expectations in school and rules and laws for everyone to follow in the community. We have been talking about what makes Britain good and how we all have different beliefs and cultures but we can live together and respect each others differences. We have taken part in team games and learnt to share our ideas and listen to the ideas of others.