Week Four in Hoy Class

Class four started the week with a very exciting and entertaining trip to the Stromness Academy.  We went to watch a show as part of the Science Festival called Disgusting Digestion.  

It told us all about our bodies and how the different parts of our bodies work together to help digest our food. 

There was a cracker eating competition to show how our saliva helps to break up food ready for digestion.

Then we were shown how the digestive system works using a gruesome experiment!

Class four also had a visit from another team of experts from the Science Festival.  This time it was about electricity and magnetism.  

We were shown lots of interesting and exciting tricks and experiments using different types of electricity.

Some of us used hamma beads to practice our spelling words this week.  

We have also had a visit from the school nurse this week.  She came in to tell us all about head lice and how to wash our hands properly to help keep our bodies healthy.  We learnt how to check our hair for headlice and how to treat them if we did find any.  

We then did a sneeze experiment using glitter to show the bacteria produced when we sneeze into our hands.  We then shook hands with each other and touched various items around the classroom.  We were very surprised to see how much glitter (bacteria) spread onto everything we touched.  

We decided it would be useful to know how to wash our hands properly to stop the bacteria spreading around everyone.

We used a special UV gel and a light box to see the mess on our hands,  then we washed our hands using the special technique shown to us by Alison.  

Some of us realised how difficult it was to actually wash all the gel off our hands!!

But we managed it in the end!!

Class four have also been learning about the human brain this week.  We found out about the three main parts of our brain and what each bit was responsible for.  

We then got ourselves into groups and began making a model human brain using various materials. 

We had to ensure that it was clearly labelled with the three main parts and an extra challenge was to have what each section did labelled too!  Watch this space to see our finished brains. 

Week three in Hoy class

Week three has been another busy week in Hoy class.  We started the week by learning about the importance of our eyes.  We learnt about the different parts of our eyes and the jobs they had.

Then we thought about what we use our eyes for,  We all agreed our eyes were very important in helping us see the world around us.  We thought about what it would be like to loose our eyesight.  We then closed our eyes and took part in some games which involved a lot of giving a lot of trust to our friends.

We looked at some optical illusions to think about the different parts our eyes use to focus.  We realised that sometimes our eyes can play tricks on us!

We had to describe a picture to a partner who then had to draw the picture.  It wasn't as easy as we thought it might be!

On Wednesday we were very lucky to get a visit from the Lidl Health Bus.  We all boarded the bus and begun the lesson by watching a video about how to keep ourselves safe, clean and healthy.

We then received our recipe cards and chose three types of fruit for our own smoothies.  

We cut the fruit up into small pieces then popped it into the jugs.  

Then it was put into the smoothie maker.

They were very tasty!!

Afterwards we were taken to the hall for some exercise.  We had to test our pulse rates before and after exercise.  We all managed to raise our heartbeats by doing physical activity.

We also had to do some last minute adjustments to our skeletons this week as a few broken bones occurred!! They are now fit and healthy!!

We spent time thinking about our characteristics this week.  We constructed a table of results showing hair colours, eye colours, lengths of hair and whether anyone in the class had freckles or glasses.  We then cut up tissue paper into squares so that we can make a large graph showing these results on our classroom window.  We hope to finish this next week.

Week 2 in Hoy Class

Week Beginning 24.8.15

Hoy class have been learning about the human skeleton this week.   We started by learning about various bones in the body and found out what their jobs are.  Then we used junk and various materials to create a life like skeleton.  We had to work in groups and make sure we included the bones we had been learning about.

Watch this space for our finished skeletons!!

On Wednesday we took part in a Tag Rugby session with Tom.  He went over skills we had learnt last year and then we played some tag games. 

We have also been learning our spelling words in different ways this week.  We have a spelling contract which we can pick an activity from.  One of the activities is to spell our words using shaving foam...

Very messy!!

It was a lovely day on Thursday so we practiced our words using chalk outside.

Hoy class - getting to know you activities

We have spent the first week of term getting to know each other.  We thought about things we wanted our classroom to be and came up with a class contract which we have all signed. 

We would like our  classroom to be safe,  happy,  fun,  respectful,  exciting and a good learning community.

We also started our human body  topic by looking at our faces.  We cut our pictures in half and tried to draw the other half.  It wasn't as easy as we thought it might be! 

Some of us challenged ourselves to complete a puzzle ball of the world!  It took a few days but it is now complete! !