Base 5 Weekly News

We have been budding scientists this week. After reading our class text 'The Garbage King', we decided that Mamo needed a new mattress as we felt that a straw one probably wasn't that comfy. Before we could even think about making them, we needed to investigate the properties of the materials that we found on the 'garbage dump'.

We couldn't make a mattress without investigating this first. We considered all Mamo's needs and restrictions and decided upon our own success criteria for the mattress- this then led our investigations. Before we began this we thought very carefully about what it meant to be a 'scientist' and what skills were needed to carry out scientific experiments. We continued to refer to these skills thought the project.
The children began by thinking carefully about the method- recognising how important accuracy and word choice were. After this, we considered how we could control our variables to ensure our test was as fair as possible. Then the children investigated the durability and water resistance of materials. From this the children were able to create results in a variety of ways, recoding data, drawing accurate diagrams, creating line and scatter graphs for different purposes. As always, the children were really involved in their work and are now looking forward to learning some new DT skills to help them to make their mattresses (with their chosen materials) next week.

As well as this we managed to sneak in a sports day practise- during the only bit of dry weather this week! The children have also been jumping in PE , writing diaries based on the story, discussing vegetarianism in RE and rehearsing their French performance. As always, a busy week for Base 5!