MrJennings

Although this was a short week, as it began with a bank holiday, we started a new unit of work in English. This is concerned with a study of fiction set in cultures other than our own. The main text we use for this in Year 5 is a Jamila Gavin book entitled Grandpa Chatterji. We have started to pick up ideas about Indian culture, but have focused on other aspects of the writing this week, including thinking about the effects of writing in different tenses and in the first rather than the third person. We have also written another argument - this time trying to persuade the council to improve the amenities at Mapperley Top.

In maths, the focus of the work has continued to be about graphs and the interpretation of line graphs. We linked this with some of our science and PE activities in that we monitored our breathing rates after different types of exercise and created graphs to present the results of our findings. Another piece of science work we did this week was to plan an experiment to investigate the conditions necessary for seeds to germinate.

In addition to having another art lesson using the chisel brush, we also began thinking about the main Design Technology topic for this term, which will be to design and make an automaton using cams and cranks. We had a look at some presentations about automata that others have created to help us understand the range of possibilities for this kind of device. Then we drew a diagram to show the components of the mechanism and describe the movement.