Today we prepared and presented our Fairtrade presentations based on the point of views suggested in the Fairtrade post below.

It was very interesting to see how we worked together to produce our final presentation. Each group has a presentation creator, a researcher, a blogger and a motivator all with different roles to help achieve the end result. I was very impressed with how some groups used each role to support another and produce some high quality research. We ended up with:

3 power points, 2 iMovies and 2 piccollages. Some presentations were supported with additional posters as well.

It was an excellent way for us to share what we had found and to help us understand the concept of Fairtrade.

Well done everyone!

Here is a short video showing our afternoon's efforts:

Thanks to the School Council, we were able to see and touch some interesting creatures. As you can see from our faces, we had an interesting (and sometimes scary) time.

A superb effort from Year 5 last week! Every single one of us achieved our weekly certificate from Mathletics including 7 silver!

Brilliant

Last week saw a fantasitc performance from the whole of Year 5. 31 of us achievled our Mathletics Bronze award for the week, and we also had one Silver award as well (for achieving 5 Bronze certificates)

Our combined score was 101,173 points which means we answered around 10,000 questions correctly last week, which is amazing! Our score saw us place 2nd in the UK and 10th in the whole world which we are all very proud of.

As part of this, Drew also featured in the daily charts for top pupil performances, finishing 2nd in the UK and 25th in the World!

I wonder how many certificates we can achieve this week. (I know some of you already have earned it in just one day! Wow!)

Today was fancy dress day across the whole school to help raise money for Children in Need. There were lots of spotty efforts in Year 5. Which one is your favourite?

This week in numeracy, we have been using the popular iPad game 'Angry Birds' to help us revisit some of the mathematical concepts that we have found tricky in the past.
Through playing the game, we have looked at:

• Types of angles (Acute, Right & Obtuse).
• Probability / Chance words.
• Nets of 3D shapes
• Measuring angles.

Lesson 1
In our first lesson, we played Angry Birds and thought about the angles that we were using. We thought about which angles were best, to help us complete the level, and the chances we had at being successful for each angle type. This allowed us to revisit some of the language associated with chance and probability. We created posters in PicCollage to show what we had found out! (Some examples are shown below)

At the end of the lesson we revisited a QCA test question about probability and the language associated with it. Using the iPad app 'Socrative' we answered the questions again hoping to show improvement in our understanding.
Our Autumn Term QCA test results showed 30% of the class had been successful in answering the question correctly.
After our 'Angry Birds' lesson 70% of us were successful in answering the question correctly (90% answered 1 of the two questions correctly)

Lesson 2
In the following lesson, we created our own Angry Bird characters. Using the nets of 3D shapes, we carefully assembled our characters. We then created a poster for display, showing which nets turned into which shapes. Hopefully this will help us to recognise nets of shapes in the future and to understand what they are.

Our 3D Angry Bird shapes!

Lesson 3
In our third Angry Birds lesson, we sketched our own level designs. We then photographed our levels as well as the characters that we created in Lesson 2. Using PicCollage we were able to crop our characters (cutting away the unwanted part from their photo) and add them to our levels. Finally we were able to add the angle that we thought the birds should be fired at to have the best chance of completing our level.
We will be able to use a protractor (angle measurer) to measure these angles in the next lesson.

Lesson 4
In our final session, we measured the angles we had suggested on our own Angry Bird level designs. We used a protractor (angle measurer) to carefull measure the angle in degrees. We moved around the classroom trying to measure as many angles as we could. It was fun seeing all of the different level designs but getting to practice our skills in numeracy as well.

References:
For more fantastic ideas, many which have
been used here, check out these other excellent blog posts:

http://mrparkinsonict.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/using-popular-ipad-games-as-stimulus-in.html?m=1

We have been learning how to read grid references in our topic work recently. This week, we decided to put our skills to the test by taking a walk around the local area. Equipped with an OS Map and a handful of 6-figure grid references we set off on our quest to find out exactly what was at our referenced points. Working in small groups, we were successful and, as you can see from some of the photographs, had a great time in the process.
Do you think our map skills could help us in numeracy? And if so, how?

Use this fantastic song, performed by Year 5, to help you remember what mean, mode, median and range are.

Thankyou to Mrs Ovington for the suggestion.

X-Factor here we come!

As part of literacy this week, we have been preparing storm poems based on 'The Wreck of the Zanzibar'. There have been a lot of fantastic ideas in our writing including similes, metaphors and alliteration. Below is an example poem using only the ideas from Year 5's work!