Year 6 Brain week so far…

By Miss Rebecca Snowdon20th May 2015

Year 6 have thoroughly enjoyed the brain week so far!

We have carried out some interesting research about the brain and had a visit from ‘The Brain Injury Rehabilitation Trust’ to hear a first-hand account of what it is like to live with a brain injury.

We then applied all of the knowledge we acquired into models of the brain, which we labelled and wrote accompanying paragraphs describing each section and its role within the body.

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Thank you to Mrs McCarville and the other visitors from The Brain Injury Rehabilitation Trust –  we learnt so much from you!

How does exercise impact on our learning zones and well being?

By V Holloway20th May 2015

Year 5 continued their investigation into endorphins today and chose to look at the effect of sport and exercise. We started by levelling our well being and learning zones before we started our lesson. Then we played a game of rounders which created an excitable buzz!

After, we completed a  short written paragraph about our investigation and endorphins and again assessed our well being and learning zones. We found a slight increase in learning zones but our well being wasn’t affected as much. We discussed the possible reasons for this: one team lost at rounders which affected well being, there can be a lot of standing around in rounders so maybe no or not many endorphins were released.
We decided to raise our heartbeats even more and tried a zumba routine!
Then, while completing some brain challenges, we made a final assessment of our learning zone and well being. The majority of children in the class found their well being and learning zones increase dramatically after zumba!
We are now plotting the changes in our well being and learning zones on line graphs.

Brainy Brains!

By admin20th May 2015

3C have really enjoyed learning about the brain the past few days! We spend Monday producing art work about the 2 sides of our brain; the left being our learning/ academic side and the right being our fun and creative side. The art work they produced was used as the front cover for their brain booklet where they can store all their learning from the week.
We also had a go at making jelly brains with spaghetti. Over the last few days, we have seen what happens to our brain when it does not receive any water, activity, learning, nurture etc. The result was 24 bowls of mouldy jelly! WOW! Children have used this to appreciate the importance of looking after their brains.
On Monday afternoon we had a visitor in to talk about the importance of protecting our brains and why it is important to wear a helmet when riding a bike. The children are now using this information to write a persuasive text to others on the importance of wearing a safety helmet and the consequences if they do not.

Watch this space for more updates 🙂

Busy Brains!

By 19th May 2015

We have been very busy learning about what our brain looks like and what it does.

 

The children have been using their growth mindsets to persist and review their learning.

Have a look at our brain pictures. We used splats of paint to represent the electrical connections that happen in our brains when we learn.

 

We have also been writing facts about the brain:

Is the brain cold? What do you think?
Can you check this fact at home?

What type of learner are you?

By J Francis19th May 2015

During Brain Week year 4 are investigating the best way of learning!

Yesterday we researched different parts of the brain and created mini cake brains which we have labelled to remind us of the parts we use when we are learning.

Today we talked about the ways we like to learn and throughout the week we will carry out mini investigations to put them to the test!

Miss Downey thinks she has a photographic memory and is a visual learner but Miss Roberts learns best when the task is auditory and visual…

We would love to know what type of learners our parents are too. What strategies did you use to learn your times tables and spellings at school?

Getting our brains into action…

By 19th May 2015

Today we have been busy learning our new text! It has lots of rhyming words can you spot them?

First we turned it into a text map to help us memorize it…

Next we worked together in our learning trios to add actions to it and performed it to each other.

Tomorrow we are going to start writing our own non-fiction books about the brain using the information we have found out so far this week….

 

Miss Tate

Growth mindset! I can, I can, I can!

By Mrs L Odell19th May 2015

This week we started our new project: Brains! We asked some BIG questions and hope to find out the answers this week! Mrs Odell was blown away when one of us asked ‘How do neurons work?’ and ‘How does our brain remember things?’! This week we want to find out as much as possible!

This afternoon we were learning about a growth mindset to find out how our brains help us when we find something tricky. First, we talked about how we feel when we find something hard and we had a very interesting discussion about this. Some of us used words such as ‘worried’ and ‘anxious’ whilst others said ‘excited’ and ‘challenged’!

After that, we talked in our trios about real life situations we remembered where we had had to have a growth mindset. Lots of us said maths and literacy!

To find out more about growth mindset and how our own brains think, we all had a go at a mindset questionnaire! Luckily, we all had really high scores! We are looking forward to our next challenge so we can use our growth mindset!!

Brain Project

By V Holloway19th May 2015

Brain week has begun! In year 5 we started brain week with some visitors from the Brain Injury Rehabilitation Centre, who gave us lots of general knowledge about the brain and how to look after it.

Each year group have a different focus for their project, year 5 are looking at endorphins and how they affect our mood and consequently our learning. We started by researching what endorphins were, as well as how and when they are released into the brain.
Year 5 have decided to hold their own investigation about endorphins. As a result of their research they found out that endorphins are released after exercising or after eating chocolate. Their research will therefore monitor their well being and learning zones while completing work after exercising, eating chocolate and without encouraging the release of endorphins. We have predicted that the release of endorphins will have a positive impact on our well being and learning zones as they are supposed to relieve stress.
They will be creating diary entries and line graphs to log their well being and learning zones.