How The World Works- Week 2

Starting the week with a design challenge using the simple machine lever this week. We continued to explore the different simple machines and the scientific principles behind them. Students were introduced to the concepts of forces, motion, gravity and friction. We will continue with this next week.

Design Challenge - Lever Challenge
On Monday students were given 8 popsicle sticks, 6 elastic bands, a plastic spoon and a pom pom. There aim with to create a machine to make the pom pom hit the target. The students all quickly came to making a form of a catapult and were all successful in hitting the target.

We spent time in the Lab combining simple machines to find solutions to simple problems using Contraption Maker.

In literacy we worked in small reading groups with Mr Jon and deepened our understanding of the simple machines, friction and gravity.

Math
Over the past few weeks we have worked on adding and subtracting numbers up to the 1000s. We have talked about different strategies we can use and being able to understand the task the need to solve.

We will start looking at the foundations of Multiplication and Division next week.

Friday we completed a number talk, the students were given a picture of some muffins and they needed to come up with a way to find out how many muffins there were without counting them individually. The students shared their solutions with the class. There were a range of different strategies including multiplication, repeated addition, and skip counting used to solve the problem.