Welcome to Class 4 - Otters

Home Learning - Friday 22nd May

Today's maths task involves building 3D shapes. Don't worry if you haven't got cocktails sticks and chickpeas like I use in the video - you can use whatever you like.

MATHS

Building 3 Dimensional shapes

Today, I’d like you to make some 3D shapes. Make sure to think about how many edges, vertices and faces your shapes have. If want to, you could take photos of your shapes and stick them in your learning book. Watch the video below where you can see the shapes I’ve made. I used cocktail sticks and chickpeas to build the 5 platonic solids: tetrahedron, hexahedron, octahedron, dodecahedron and icosahedron!

ENGLISH

Mrs Frisby and the Rats of Nimh: Reading Comprehension

Read Chapter 23 from the attached pdf, or listen to me reading it on the video below, and then answer the following questions:

1. Mr Ages explains why Jonathon Frisby never told Mrs Frisby about NIMH. What was the main reason?
2. Do you think Mrs Frisby’s children will have an increased lifespan? Why?
3. How did the rats plan to remove the temptation of returning to an easy life?
4. Why does Mr Ages think that Dragon won’t be in the kitchen when Mrs Frisby goes in? (p3)
5. The rats and Mr Ages have clearly gone to the Fitzgibbon’s kitchen many times before. What three alterations do we learn about (at end of p4 and the beginning of p5) that the rats have done to make this journey easier for themselves?
6. Mrs Frisby is described as having been ‘admonished’. What does ’admonished’ mean (you may need to look it up in a dictionary) and who was admonishing who?
7. Why was the placement of Dragon’s bowl a problem?
8. Why did the ceiling above Mrs Frisby ‘become curved’ and ‘filled with little round moons’(p6)?

Revision

End of Term Quiz

For the last day of term, I thought we should have a go at a quiz featuring questions about things we’ve learned about this term. You could have a go at my quiz – but you could also try creating one of your own to try on your parents! The question are on the attached pdf - as are the answers, so no peeking.

It is all about ancient history, based on what we have read in A Little History of the World. There are 16 questions and I think it’s pretty tricky. Anything close to half marks and you’ve done really well!

The Great Wall of China

After learning about the purpose of the Great Wall of China and its construction over many centuries, we tried making our own model of the wall out of clay. Each table worked together to build a guard tower and a wall section and then we put them all together to make one long wall which is on display outside Class 4.  

Making Switches

The children created their own switches out of cardboard, copper tape, tin foil, split pins, elastic bands and sellotape. They designed and built them in groups of 3 or 4 and afterwards we tested them. They all worked and there were some amazingly creative designs!

Wiring a Plug

With the increasing use of moulded plugs, actually wiring a plug is becoming a lost art! Not in Class 4, where we gamely dismantled and then reassembled our plugs. We learnt what the different wires and pins were and how a fuse works. Wiring a plug can be a very fiddly, frustrating task, but the children all showed amazing resilience and perseverance to accomplish it. 

3d Shape Making

We tried making 3d shapes using doweling and elastic bands. First, we made triangles and squares. We noticed how much more stable the triangles were, and decided to reinforce our squares with diagonal supports. Next, we tried to make cubes. Again, we used diagonal supports in each square, and we found that the supports had created two pyramids inside our cubes. Finally, we decided to make some regular tetrahedrons and see how high we could stack them to create bigger pyramids. The triangular based pyramid is a really strong, stable shape. We stacked 4 pyramids to make bigger ones and then stacked 4 of those to make a giant one!

Afternoon Tea

We all made scones in Class 4. The children prepared, measured and mixed the ingredients before rolling the dough and cutting out the scones. We took them to Michelle in the school kitchen, who very kindly stayed behind to bake them for us. There was much debate about whether to apply the cream first or the jam first, but we all agreed they were delicious.  

Minibeast Hunt

Class 4 spent an afternoon exploring the rich diversity of life to be found in the school grounds. The children found a host of different animals which they were able to observe closely and record information about. We were careful not to harm the creatures we found, although, in one case, a disgruntled bee didn't return that courtesy!