As a reward for Middle IV children’s hard work in Science this year, one of the last lessons of the year ended with a particularly explosive session on air pressure. We have made a video of our experiment for you to enjoy.

Our video

In their French lessons, Middle IV children are learning how to describe what they are wearing.

For once, Middle IV enjoyed glorious weather on their annual three day trip to Robinwood Activity Centre in Todmorden. This is always a hugely popular trip, but a little sunshine made it all the more invigorating!

Robinwood has been extended this year, so along with the familiar activities of moorland challenge, bouldering, canoeing, indoor caving, archery, climbing, night line, team challenge, stream walk, piranha pool and raft building, the children also enjoyed trapeze and crate challenge. The accompanying photos and video will provide a flavour of what these entailed.

The enthusiasm and professionalism of the young Robinwood instructors is second to none, and they gently coax and cajole even the most tentative to attempt things they never imagined they could! With the encouragement of their classmates, all the children managed to push themselves to their personal limits and gain the admiration of their teachers.

We, of course, expect high standards of behaviour from our children at The Gleddings, but it was nice that they were particularly commended by the staff at Robinwood for their excellent behaviour.

Please click here to view our photos

Please click here to see our video

On Tuesday March 29^th, Middle IV children visited two of Yorkshire Water’s water treatment plants as part of their study of ‘water’ in geography and science.  The morning was spent at the clean water treatment plant in Headingley, and the afternoon at the waste water treatment plant in Esholt.  This enabled the children to gain a clearer understanding of the water cycle and of how water is made safe to drink and safe to return to our rivers after we have used it.

At both plants, the children were guided around the treatment processes as well as engaging in fun activities in the two education centres.

Please click here to view our photos!

Changing State – with chocolate!

Here is a video of our changing state experiments. We melted and cooled chocolate and used moulds to change their shape. This works because liquids take the shape of any container they are in. Then once the chocolate cools and solidifies it keeps its new shape.

We also set up our own mini water cycle, following our trip to Yorkshire Water, to observe evaporation and condensation. We discussed transpiration (where water travels from underground through plants) and burning (the process that occurs when heat is applied to a solid which cannot melt).

Whilst Middle IV children have been learning about changing state, we came across a problem. We struggled to classify an egg into one of the three states as we could not decide whether it was a liquid or a solid. So we decided to EXPERIMENT!

We observed our egg in its original form, and rightly decided that the shell, at least, was a solid. However the real debate came after cracking the shell, the albumen (egg white) was clearly a liquid, as it poured and took the shape of our bowl. But what was the yolk? There was a 50-50 divide through the class! You could poke it, you could hold it, and it could even wobble… so we burst it!

After messy fun, we concluded that the yolk has a membrane that contains the liquid yolk which only becomes solid when cooked!

Over the last few months, Middle IV pupils have been busy rehearsing in their weekly French lessons for a new venture, and on Thursday 17^th March, they performed ‘La Chanson du Retour’ for an audience of parents, grandparents and friends.

This musical production, entirely in French, tells the story of Lea, a girl obsessed with computer games, who finds herself transported in a moment of magic through a series of strange worlds.  On her musical dancing journey, she begins to appreciate the important things in life and eventually finds the mystery song which will enable her to return home.

Every child in the class had a substantial part in the performance, and they were all simply fabulous!

Video – Part 1      Video – Part 2

On Friday 28^th January, Middle IV enjoyed a visit from three members of the West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service.  They showed the children some hard-hitting DVDs : one taught them the importance of fitting and testing smoke alarms and having a fire plan, ready to put into action should a fire break out in their homes; and another made them understand how important it is that no one should endanger lives by making hoax calls to the emergency services.

Fire crews spend more time dealing with road accidents than with fires, and our visitors demonstrated to the children how vital it is for everyone in a car to wear a seatbelt on every journey, however short.

Fortunately, the fire officers had just about finished their excellent presentation when they were called away to an emergency.

Middle IV children had great fun acting out a scene from ‘The Phantom Sausage Stealer’ by Johnny Ball.

They learned their lines extremely well and brought in props from home to enhance their hilarious performances.

MIV have been using their thinking skills to build chairs for Form III. They worked in two groups and had only basic instructions to follow. It was quite a difficult task but both groups worked together and overcame the difficulties. The children in Form III are thrilled to have new chairs!

DIY instructions are never easy!

Even Mrs Wilson found this task challenging.