Sapphire newsletter
HistoryWe are so excited to learn more about the discovery of Tutankhamun and how it impacted history.We have already learnt about who Howard Carter was and how he came to find the missing tomb. It turns out that although Howard Carter was the lead archaeologist, it wasn’t him who found the tomb; it was actually a young water boy who discovered the first few steps that led the team to it. Can you imagine if he had never done so! Once we learnt the story of Howard Carter, we became mini archaeologists and took part in 2 digs where we uncovered ancient pottery and Egyptian artefacts. It was so much fun actually getting to take part in a dig, never knowing what we were going to dig up. Some of the pottery pieces and artefacts were broken so we had to piece them back together and try and figure out what they were originally.ScienceTo start off our science lessons, we are learning all about fair testing. We’ve learnt a few new words like variable, hypothesis, prediction and conclusion. Miss Tonner will be testing us week to make sure we can remember what the words mean and that we can use the, properly. Our first science experiment was investigating what affected the time it takes for a parachute to fall. We came up with lots of different variables like the shape of the parachute, the size, the material, the height we drop it from, the weight of the passenger and the length of the strings holding the parachute together. Our class voted for investigating the types of materials. We chose to make parachutes out of pleather, bubble wrap, duck tape, plastic bag, bin bag, cotton shirt and thick cloth. We had to make predictions about what we thought and then we tested them. Each group dropped their parachute from the staff room window while someone timed the fall. We discovered that the lighter the material, the long the time it took for the parachute to fall.Art
We have been developing our sketching skills so that we can use them to draw lots of different artefacts from our historical dig as well as ones that are replicas of what was found by Howard Carter and his team in 1922. Once we have drawn a selection of these artefacts, we will be making our own versions out of clay!
Maths
We started the year off learning about place value. We are all confident in talking about 3 and 4-digit numbers. Some of us have found rounding to the nearest 10 tricky, but we’re working hard to understand it. We are enjoying the problem solving parts of the lessons.
English
Our English unit is based on a book by Joe Todd Stanton called Marcy and the Riddle of the Sphinx. It is about a young girl who has an adventurous father, but she doesn’t feel as brave as he does and has a big fear of the dark. So far, we have written diary entries, letters, fact pages as well as lots of drama and role playing so we can understand the characters better.