Autumn Term

Design Technology - Bridge building

INVESTIGATE

We found out about a talented engineer from British history called Isambard Kingdom Brunel. He built many different designs of bridges and was very successful.

DESIGN

In order to make our own bridges, we drew our designs and thought about what materials would work well.

CREATE - EXPERIMENT

First, we used Unifix blocks to experiment with our designs. We experimented with symmetry and height to make some practical choices.

CREATE

Next, we learned how to make trusses out of triangle shapes using paper straws. We found the triangles were really strong and didn't flop over like the square shapes. 

CHALLENGE!

We had a tray of materials, and a gap of 30cm between two tables. In our teams, we had to build a strong, stable bridge to span the gap. We had 1 hour!

EVALUATE

Each team had their bridge tested for how much weight they could carry. Most of them were pretty strong, holding up to 1,700g of weight! We then discussed what worked well, and what changed could be made. We really enjoyed this team activity - check out the photos!

HARVEST PREPARATION!

Today we are getting ready for harvest festival on Monday!

In the morning, we wrote autumn poetry. We have also been doing leaf rubbing to make some paper leaves for a class picture. It was great fun gathering leaves from the woodland walk and using autumn colours to make rubbings. Then, we cut them out ready to make pictures tomorrow. 

While we did this, we were listening to Vivaldi's piece of music called Autumn, which is from his Four Seasons violin concerto. It was a very calm and fun afternoon. 

SCIENCE TOPIC - PLANTS

Our first science topic is all about plants. Our first investigation is finding out what plants need to survive.

The children came up with various ideas for how we can test for each of the five needs, and this week we set up the experiments. 

We set up 6 pots to grow cress seeds.

One of the pots had soil, water, air, space and light. This was called the control experiment.

All the others had one of the needs missing.

We will be checking on the plants every day for any progress...

POETRY WRITING

Dove class began the year by reading the poem The British by Benjamin Zephaniah.

In the poem, he talks about the British like a recipe of different kinds of people. We used this poem to inspire us to write a poem about a recipe for Bramber school.

To get us in the mood, we baked some cupcakes so we understood what a recipe was, and how imperative verbs are used to give instructions - we had so much fun we didn't realise we were learning!

Take a look at the photos.