Museum of London, Docklands

Today Year 5 paid a visit to the Museum of London in the Docklands. We learnt how port of London has developed and changes over time from hundreds of years ago to the present day.

We also explored the gallery which showed how the trade in enslaved Africans and sugar shaped London.

Did you know that the museum building itself is central to this story? It was built at the time of the transatlantic slave trade, to store the sugar from the West Indian plantations where enslaved men, women and children worked.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

As part of our half term theme of environmental awareness, today we used our sewing skills to begin to turn t-shirts into tote bags.

We look forward to showing you our finished bags!

Parachutes

Coral class have been investigating forces in Science. We discussed the fact that Sir Isaac Newton made one of his most important discoveries when an apple fell from the tree he was sitting under and hit him on the head – a force named gravity.

Gravity is the force that keeps us grounded on Earth and makes sure that what goes up must come down!

We looked at other forces including:

•Push

•Pull

•Air resistance

•Up-thrust

•Friction

and found that a force is something that when applied will change the motion or shape of an object. It could change the speed. It could change the direction, as well as change the shape.

We conducted an experiment to test how air resistance acts on a parachute. Does a change in mass or surface area affect the time taken for the parachute to fall from the same height at the same speed? We found that the heavier the mass, or the smaller the surface area, the faster tha parachute falls.

Designing Tote Bags

This half term Year 5 will be designing and making tote bags as part of DT . We examined a range of different bags for suitability and strength before designing our own version. The children thought carefully about the design and how they would make sure to strengthen their bags.

Mental Health

In PSHE we are exploring issues surrounding mental health. We discussed what can cause both good and poor mental health and what we can do to improve our mental health when we are feeling low. This includes thinking about people we can trust and organisations such as Childline who can support us.