This week in Maths, Reception began learning by revisiting the story ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’ to recall positional language. Then we looked at illustrations in this weeks story ‘Elmer’ to extend our vocabulary. Next we looked around the classroom for Elmer and his friends and described where they were hiding.
Year 5 have been rounding up to 6 digit numbers. We worked together to solve challenging word problems and reasoning questions. AJ explained, “You find the 100,000 column, and then look at the 10,000 column. It tells you if you need to round up or round down. So 546,500 would round down to 500,000.” All the children enjoyed rounding numbers up to 1,000,000.
In maths, we have been comparing numbers. We made two amounts using Base 10 then looked at the tens and ones (and even hundreds!) to decide if the number was greater than, less than or equal to the second number.
Year 5 have been finding the volume of different shapes by counting cubes and recording the volume in cubic centimetres. Then we have decided which shape has the greater volume, using comparison symbols. Jess and Amelie shared their thoughts, “We loved doing it because it helped us to identify the different volume of different shapes.”
This week, Year 2 have explored volume and capacity in a practical way using a variety of containers and describing whether it was full, nearly full, empty and nearly empty. We learned that the tallest container does not always hold the most liquid.
Then we used measuring jugs and cylinders to measure amounts of liquid in milliliters. We had to think carefully about which container was the most suitable for measuring smaller or larger amounts.
This week we are learning about mass and weight. First we held objects and described them using vocabulary such as heavy, light, heavier than, lighter than, then we used the scales to check. We found out that larger items are not always heavier.
After a week of work, the children have competed in their STEM week competition. They delivered their presentations to a panel of judges – including the Economic Inclusion and Career Development Coordinator for South Tyneside, a representative from the National Centre for Computing Education and the deputy head, Mr Donnelly. The children came back from presentations full of energy and enthusiasm. Their ideas got feedback such as ‘that’ll be tough to top’ and ‘this could work in the school yard to create energy’.
They have also took part in 3 robot games – which involved running their code to complete as many tasks as possible to score the highest amount of points. There have been some jumping with excitement and some hands covering faces in disappointment – but with some amendments and improvements, fun was had by all.
The semi-finals of the robot game took place in the afternoon (after an impromptu quarter finals because of a 7-way tie for 4th place), with the 6 top scoring teams competing in a knock out. The top 3 teams went through to the finals to compete for the robot game trophy.
To end the day, the children enjoyed the trophy ceremony. Each of the winning teams received a trophy and were celebrated by their peers in the sports hall.
The winners were:
Robot Design – Brick-otatoes (6F)
Core Values – Game Changers (6T)
Innovation Project – Brainiacs (6A)
Judges’ Award – Super Septuplets (6A)
Robot Game – Rotten Robots (6T)
Champions Awards (and overall winner of the week) – Energetic Energy (5L)
Based on the output of work, dedication to coding and overall enthusiasm from the children this week, the staff would like to think that STEM week was a roaring success!
On Wednesday we began to create our presentations in groups and we also built our innovation models. We needed to develop the coding on SPIKE and we conducted further research to help us with our presentations for the end of the week.
Yesterday we built all of the models we needed for the robot game and did some research into different types of energy, and today we started coding and planning our invention!
In our teams, we chose which missions we would like to complete and worked together to code the robot to make it move and turn where we wanted it to go. We even built some attachments for the robot to make it easier to lift, push and pull different mechanisms to achieve the missions.
We also worked in our groups to think about our innovation project – what different ways can we make renewable energy? We have some fantastic ideas already which we will be developing over the next couple of days.
Tuesday was the second day of our Lego Challenge STEM Week. Each class was split into 4 teams. The first task was to come up with a team name – some were unusual to say the least! Then it was time to code the robot to carry out tasks on the models which were built yesterday. There was also an innovation project to start in which a sustainable energy invention was designed.
The children were busy all day, and even though it was very noisy, there was some amazing STEM work taking place.
