We made a simple, bitter chocolate from cocoa powder, sugar and butter to see what it was like. Our next step will be to add different things in to make our own bar of chocolate.
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We did an experiment to see which chocolate would melt first: dark, milk or white. We put a piece of chocolate in it's own foil boat and set it in to a bowl of hot water. It took quite a while, but we discovered that our dark chocolate melted first, then the milk with the white chocolate last. We also carried out an investigation to see which material makes for the best chocolate bar wrapper. We put a piece of chocolate wrapped in different materials in a ziplock bag along with a piece of onion and left it over night.
The foil made for the best sort of wrapper as it kept out smell and taste. The paper towel was the worst as it absorbed the juice from the onion and the chocolate had a strong smell and taste of the onion. Having found out where chocolate comes from and where the factories are that turn the cacao into chocolate ready for us to eat, we looked at the history of chocolate. The Mayan and Aztec people who lived around what is now Mexico drank a very bitter chocolate drink or xocolatl. We made some of our own. Welcome to the final term of the academic year. Our focus for this term is Chocolate! We got off to a sweet start with our taste test. We were being chocolate scientists and investigating whether we could smell and taste the difference between milk, dark and white chocolate. Some of us were more accurate than others! We also had a mystery chocolate where we had to decide what flavouring had been added to it. Only a few people worked this one out.
When our research about volcanoes was complete, we moved on to earthquakes. We had already looked at what plate tectonics are and saw how their movement caused earthquakes. We created our own seismographs to measure the strength of an earthquake. We also made simple buildings to see how easily they would fall during an earthquake. We then used paper to create a stronger structure that would not topple over quite so easily. These are our seismographs and below are the structures we made. Will our buildings stand up to an 'earthquake'? Active Planet: Volcanoes and EarthquakesThis first half term has been a busy one. We have been investigating how our dangerous our planet can be with the volcanoes and earthquakes that we experience. We have been researching, presenting and creating art on the theme. Below are some of the photos of the different things that we have been doing. Here, we were piecing together the plates of the Earth, like a big jigsaw puzzle. We know that this is called plate tectonics. Then we made volcanoes (which we will use again when we do some science work). We also created our own volcano image and wrote about the materials we chose. As part of our unit on Explorers, we headed out to the local park to see what plants we could find to draw. Many of the old explorers made sketches of the new plants they came across on their travels, and so we planned to do the same. We observed different plants from around the world and drew what we could see. Here are some photos of us at work and some photos of our drawings. Back in the classroom, we turned our sketches into more colourful, detailed drawings. Have a look at some of our finished pieces:
We used Morfobooth app to tell a story about the life of our chosen explorers. Have a look to see what you think: By Mangon By Callie and Namfar By Laurent and Taylor By Nadia and Chompoo By Gun By Jao Sua By Hero and Dragon By Aashi and Kayley By Red
Last week, it was our class assembly. Our theme was Explorers as that is what our new topic is all about this half term. Everyone did an amazing job at learning lines and they spoke so clearly. They should be very proud of themselves - I know I'm proud of them! If you missed the assembly, you can watch it here: The end of the half term saw us busy with our World Literature Week activities. Year 4 focused on the author Roald Dahl and we looked at how he created and developed characters within his stories. At the end of the week, parents were invited in to see the work that we had been doing. Below are the sound recordings of an extra trick that Mr or Mrs Twit might play on one another. |
AuthorI am a teacher in an international setting: currently working in Bangkok, Thailand Archives
May 2018
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