Our gymnastics lesson today was all about pike and straddle positions. We needed to work on having straight backs and legs. Cesare and Luis choreographed a brilliant routine with several pike and straddle poses. They also thought carefully about their transitions between each move.

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Today Year 5 mapped out the distance from the sun to each planet. We used toilet paper, with each sheet representing 10 million km. Earth is 150,000,000 km from the sun with Neptune being 4,500,000,000 km. Many of us didn’t realise that the planets weren’t evenly spread across the solar system.

This afternoon in our Science lesson, we used chemical reactions to create new materials.

First, we mixed bicarbonate of soda (50g) with distilled vinegar (50ml). The chemical change creates carbon dioxide which is a gas. This gas is used for fizzy drinks, cooling foods on aeroplanes and is used in fire extinguishers to put out fires.

We then mixed warm milk (250ml) with distilled vinegar (1 tbsp). It looked like the milk curdled. We were all amazed that it made a type of plastic called casein.

Year 5 were visited by Congleton Fire and Rescue today. We learnt about the dangers of fire; how to escape from a fire; what to do if the room was filled with smoke and how having smoke alarms are crucial. We went in the smoke tent so that we could experience how smoke rises and that we need to keep low to the floor when there is a fire.

Today Year 5 were invited to Eaton Bank for a basketball and trampolining session. The children practised their bouncing, chest pass and shooting skills in basketball. In trampolining, they learnt to do a tuck, straddle and pike as well as seat drops. Some of them even tried front drops.

Love Music Trust spent the morning with us today. We composed a piece of music based on the book Lost Words. We learnt about dynamics, crescendo, texture, timbre and mood. We also learnt about ostinato which is when phrases are repeated.

This week Year 5 have been cooking with Mrs Barnes. First we made milopita cakes with apple and cinnamon. Mrs Pearce enjoyed a daily treat! We also baked Greek bread. We used thyme, which some of us didn’t like.

We had a brilliant trip to the Monkey Forest. We saw monkeys grooming as a sign of affection; chattering to show they were being friendly and a little bit of fighting! We watched as the monkeys were fed: fruit, vegetables and cereal. We loved all their different facial expressions.

On Thursday, Rohan, Fay, Gaby and Oliver R travelled to Eaton Bank Academy for a Fairtrade workshop session.

They went into a DT room with children from other schools and learnt about Fairtrade and talked about how farmers in other countries need to keep birds from eating their crops. They made windmill bird scarers which they decorated with images of birds of prey faces and eyes. Ollie’s artwork was even commented on by their art teacher- well done Ollie!

The group then went to a Geography class and learnt about how items are manufactured in other countries and are then traded for money and goods with other countries. They played a trading game where they had to manufacture shapes from paper which they could sell for money or trade with other teams for equipment. each team started off with different amounts of money and equipment.

On Friday we learnt all about the difference between Ancient Greek Olympic sports compared to modern day. Rohan shared his half-term homework about Olympic sports and we then each posed as an olympic sport and then some of us guessed what sport each child was posing as.

Year 5 were visited by  2 firemen from Congleton Fire Station who told us all about Fire safety and to think about our fire plans at home. Some of us even got the opportunity to try to go in a smoke tent.

This morning Year 5’s were treated to an extraordinary visit from Roberts Bakery where they learnt all about what bread is made from and the science that is involved with making bread. They even became bakers for the morning and made their own small loaves of bread. What a fab morning had by all!

We’ve had a super start to Anti Bullying Week this week. We talked about what respect means to us and then we talked about how we can show respect. Miss Sowry then talked about what is nice about each person in our class and introduced Student shoutouts to the class.