Year 5S Newsletter
Friday 5th February 2016
Literacy
Science
We have begun a new unit of work where we
are studying the different features of a story
told in film. The film is called “Magik Circus”
and is full of atmosphere and surprises.
So far we have
spent some time
thinking about how
different film
techniques change
the viewpoint and
affect the viewer.
Ask your child about their homework this week
to continue thinking about this!
We have also started to examine the
characters, and using inference and evidence
from the film to describe their thoughts and
feelings. Next week we will be film editors,
writing a script and storyboard to present
dialogue in the film!
There has been a lot of science going on in the
school this week, all about colour. In year 5 we
decided to investigate two interesting
questions.
The first one was “Why does the sky appear
blue?” Our first thoughts about reflecting the
sea were tested, and once we saw pictures of
desert skies, we needed to think again.
P.E.
In gymnastics we have moved on to using
asymmetrical balances and movements to
move along a path over equipment. This took a
lot of co-operation and planning to set up a
sequence of moves and balances that let us
travel across the room.
Numeracy
Numeracy this week has been reviewing
multiplication methods, such as using number
facts and halving or doubling to work out
numbers multiplied by 20 or 5, and multiples of
2, 4 and 8. Knowing that 23 x 10 = 230 means
you can quickly half the answer to find that
23 x 5 = 115!
We have also reviewed using short
multiplication to multiply four digit numbers by a
one digit number, and have been using
estimating and the longer grid method to check.
Try out a few at home to practise!
First we needed to understand
that white light from the Sun is
made of all the different colours.
We also needed to know that the
sky is made of air which made up
of lots of tiny particles. We shone torches
through a tank of milky
water, and this showed us
that some colours of light
get through particles,
whereas others bounce
around. Blue light is the
light that gets bounced
around most from all the
particles in the air, and so
more blue light hits our
eyes. This is why the sky
looks blue!
Our second question was “Does colour affect
what we taste?” To investigate this Mr Scott set
up a sneaky experiment where we tasted a red
drink, a blue drink and a green drink. We all
wrote down that the drinks had different
flavours, even though it turned out that they
were all exactly the same drink, only with colour
added! It seems that colour can change our
minds!
We finished by looking at a famous optical
illusion. Square A and square B in the picture
below are the same colour. Ask your child to
prove it to you. So it seems that not only can
colour change our minds, but our minds can
change colours!