Five for Friday

Wow, it's been a looong time...again.
I love love love reading blogs, but am so incredibly lazy when it comes to posting.
We've had such an amazing and intense week at school that I thought I could finally muster up the energy to write a post.
I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for her weekly linky.

It was National Science and Engineering week, so our school decided to tweak it a little and have Maths and Science week. Monday was Maths Day and we challenged our students with different puzzles and problems all day. They absolutely loved it. I really enjoyed getting to work with my class for maths and see how they worked together. I also enjoyed challenging my maths set (top set, very clever).

The two activities I had in my class were team challenges. The first was a grid numbered 1 - 12. Each player had a counter and their playing piece. Each person took a turn to roll the dice, if their number was rolled, they moved up the grid. The first to the finish won. This was a fantastic activity to introduce my kiddos to the idea of probability. When everyone had a chance to play we discussed numbers that were most commonly rolled and those that didn't come up. They then were able to deduce that 7 was a good number because it had lots of different combos, whereas those students that chose 12, rarely moved.

The other activity we did was a logic puzzle - A farmer has to cross a lake with his chicken, grain and fox. He can only take one item at a time. If he leave the chicken with the grain, the chicken will eat the grain, if he leaves the fox with the chicken, the fox will eat the chicken...how does he get everything across? I created little cards with each item so the students could physically move the items from one side to the other.
This one stumped them!

Wednesday we had this company come in and run a Forensic Science day. We set up our school entrance to look like a crime scene, with tape and everything. Each child was given an outfit to wear and keep. We rotated throughout the day doing different activities to try and find out who the culprit was. The children had the opportunity to make molds and plaster casts of their thumbs, they also learned how to make dental molds using dentures (like when you go to the dentist), they took fingerprints and shoe prints and finished the day using Photofit software (like the police use) to create a picture of our suspects. I must say, that bit was shocking, the suspects were 3 teachers in our school, and some of those photofits looked questionable!

My class looking pretty amazing and ready to solve a crime!

Wednesday was Science Day. This day was by far my favourite of the week. My class rocked with their behaviour and made each activity so enjoyable. We were fortunate enough to have lecturers and students from our local university (go UEA!) who work in the Science department, come and run experiments with each year group. My hubby's year group had the chance to make DNA necklaces, whereas my kids got to play with citric acid and other stuff to change the temperature of water. I've got some pretty challenging students in my class, which you would never have known because of how engaged and well-mannered they were. The best compliment I received was from the university lecturer saying how well my class worked and how much they enjoyed it! 

Sorry for the random stickers, I was trying to get creative with keeping the kids anonymous

We tried out 3-4 experiments throughout the day. The above experiment we did together showed students how when an acid is mixed with an alkali, it can produce gas. I may have sorta had them add a wee bit too much vinegar to their bottles...at least they really were able to see the chemical reaction.

Yesterday (and this weekend) is Sport Relief. It is a fundraiser that happens every other year. I wrote about Comic Relief last year, which happens on the off years, but I digress. This is a massive event in the UK where people take part in sport or challenges and raise money for charity. The money goes to charities in the UK and around the world. On Friday night they have a programme with different comedy sketches, sporting events and video to show how the charity benefits others. If you click the link above, you should be able to see David Beckham (god he is glorious) in action!

Our school ran a mile in the morning. The children could walk, run, skip, do it in pairs...anything they wanted really. It was great fun to start the morning with some exercise. That's probably the most I've 'run' (I use the term rather loosely) in ages.

Some of the Year 4s, ready for action!

I've been watching way too much TV (what's new) or should I say Netflix? My hubs and I have managed to finish House of Cards series 2, the last 3 seasons of The Office, I've also managed series 1 of Once Upon a Time (which I still can't decide if I like or not) and we've just started watching Grimm. And this has been the last month! Netflix...I love but hate you so!

Well done if you've made it to the end. If you want any math ideas for games and puzzles, I've got some resources, so just send me an email.

Cheers!