Man lands on the moon!

We've been starting work on our ‘More than Mods and Rockers’ newspaper reports work, using Talk for Writing strategies to orally learn a newspaper report on the moon landings. This is our first attempt at learning non-fiction in this way and we've had great fun so far trying to learn the text, drawing a text map and coming up with actions to help memorise the text. Here is a video clip of how far we've got after the first two days.

Dr. Ferret and his bad medicine workshop!

We had a visit today (Monday 25^th February) from members of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama who held an opera workshop with our class. This was the first time any of the class had experienced any kind of opera so we were all a bit nervous but equally excited. We started off by learning some of the technical facts about opera and were then treated to one of the members singing some opera for us which was amazing! We then had a go at some warm up activities to get ourselves ready for the main part of the workshop which was to look at the opera ‘Dr Ferret and his bad medicine”. We learnt the overview of the story and then freeze framed certain scenes. Finally, we had a go at singing part of one of the main songs in the opera. It was an awesome experience which we all thoroughly enjoyed and now can’t wait till this forthcoming Monday’s performance of ‘Dr Ferret’. 

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Science is tasty!

Year 6 conducted a tasty investigation today, looking at how the three states of matter are affected when melting a bar of chocolate. They had to make chocolate rice crispie cakes and observe, describe and record the changes of the states of matter as the process continued.

The first thing that intrigued the class was, “Is chocolate affected by all three states of matter; does chocolate evaporate?” This was an interesting question which they discussed and then came up with an idea on how to investigate. They all agreed that they needed to weigh a block of chocolate, melt it, cool it and then weigh it again.

A problem was then posed for them, how are they going collect the melted chocolate if they just plop it in boiling water? They discussed this and then came up with the idea of putting it in a heat resistant container and then floating that on the boiling water.

They had to weigh the container on accurate digital scales and then weigh it with the block of chocolate in. They then had to subtract this number to find out its weight. It weighed 8g at room temperature. Once left to cool, they reweighed it and worked out that it now weighed 7g, proving that there was some loss due to evaporation.

The rice crispie cake process then allowed them to observe and record the transition through the states of matter and the effect on the particles when melting chocolate. It also proved that science can be tasty!

1960s memories... we need you!

Next half term Year 5 & 6 are moving onto the topic ‘More than Mods and Rockers’. This is a themed topic with a history focus which is looking at life in the 1960s and the significant social, cultural and political events of the time.

To kick off this topic we are looking for parents/grandparents etc… who have memories of life during the 1960s with a special focus on life in Llanharan during this time. We’re looking for photographs, video clips, newspapers, magazines, clothes, music etc… which can help immerse our pupils into the ‘feel’ of the 1960s.  It would also be great if anyone could possibly give up their time one day in the first week after half term to share their experiences of life during this period with the class.

If you could help in anyway, please contact the school, or tweet us at @lps140club on Twitter or even respond to the post on our Blog.

Many thanks

Mr Roberts

Potions - soaps

Our class have been finishing off our ‘Potions’ topic this week by planning, designing, making and evaluating their own scented soap.

On Monday we tested and rated different scents such as apple, blueberry, coconut, honey, mustard, lavender, cinnamon and mint. We smelled the scents and gave them a rating out of 5. We then decided who would like the scents in soaps and at what time of year would they be most popular. Once each member in their groups had rated the scents they worked out an average score. The top four scents were then put into a mixing dish and stirred together to see how they blended. For sheer curiosity sake, the bottom four were also mixed together… these didn’t smell good at all. Mustard should not be put in soaps!

Today we had a go at making our soap. We started off by shaving a plain bar of soap into little flakes using a cheese grater. We then added apple, blueberry and coconut with some warm water. The next phase of the operation was for individuals to choose their two additional ingredients to mix in. The choices were from chilli, chocolate, coffee, mint, ginger and almond. The final phase was to roll together the ingredients just as you would roll playdough. When smelling the soaps, the smell of the original bar was still quite overpowering, however, when rubbing the soap on our hands, we could definitely smell the added scents.