Years 5s have been finishing off their adventurous journals. Ask them what personification they've used to describe the desert. We had some fantastic ideas such as the "the dead bushes reached up the like curled and crooked fingers" and "the wall of sand swallowed everything in its path". 

In history with the Year 5s and 6s, we looked at the Benin Kingdoms civil war and discussed the causes of it. The children can tell you all about what The Golden Age was like and why it was called this. Throughout the weeks, we've also been exploring the difference between primary and secondary sources in more depth. See if they can remember which ones we've looked at!

In RE, they did some independent research on Passover. Using books about Judaism and Chromebooks, the class tried to find the answers to questions. Some even used the index at the back of the book to help them!

Science explored thermal insulators and conductors. Can they tell you which one lets heat pass through quickly and which doesn't? Or what materials make good insulators and conductors? We will be doing an experiment this week where the class will be building their own insulators to try and keep an ice cube from melting as much as possible in just a few hours. Gather some recycled materials at home to bring in on Wednesday that might work as good insulators to help the class build theirs!

We've had a busy two and a half weeks in Birch Class!

In English, we have started looking at The Lost Book of Adventure by the Unknown Adventurer. We have looked at audience and purpose and how they can change. We have done extensive work on simile, metaphor and personification and why they are so effective. At the end of last week, we also had a look at expanded noun phrases and verb choice. This upcoming week, we will focus a lesson on punctuation, exploring dashes and brackets to add extra explanation and then we will start writing our own journal entry for the adventurer. The Year 5s will write a narrative recount on either their experience in a sand storm or hallucinating a mirage when they've run out of water in the desert. We're in for an exciting week!

In maths, they have started and finished perimeter and area and we have moved onto our second unit on multiplication and division where we will be expanding our knowledge and looking at long multiplication and division.

Our afternoons have been just as busy. Our exciting history topic, the Benin Kingdom, has had us exploring its general history, its geography, the daily life of the Edo people and how trade made it a successful empire. We have learned about primary and secondary sources and we have started to touch upon what happened at the end of the Benin Kingdom and the tragic story of what happened to the people and the culture.

In science, we have been learning about heat. Our first three sessions focused on particle behaviour. Some of our students have acted out how particles move when they freeze, melt, condense and boil and also how they behave to cause thermal expansion. Last week, we looked at thermal equilibrium and did an experiment that showed the different sensations we felt when putting our hand in hot water and then in room temperature water and the same with cold water. The children noticed that the hand in hot water felt colder in room temperature water and the cold water hand felt warmer. They quickly figured out that it was because one hand was cooling down the other was warming up to match the room temperature. The heat moves from one object to another. Ask your children to see if they remember any real life examples of this or maybe they can even show you our experiment at home!