Mrs Whomsley (Head of Year 5)

Year 5 used oranges and chocolate in their lessons this week to gain a better understanding of the Earth’s structure! 

After peeling the oranges, the girls were asked to piece the segments back together, securing each piece back into place with a cocktail stick. Having not been told what they would be asked to do with their peeled oranges, this proved particularly challenging for those groups who had peeled their oranges into many pieces. This simple activity gave us a better understanding of how plate tectonics cover the Earth’s crust and how they can move towards and away from each other. 

In order to look further at the consequences of the movement of plate tectonics, we used a Mars bar to get a better understanding of the layers of the Earth and how the plates can move in different directions. This proved to be a little messy as the bars were pulled and pushed together, as well as quite tempting to eat our investigations but we were all very restrained and the Mars bars remained intact, if a little squashed, by the end of it! 

The girls were able to use their investigations as a basis for writing an explanation text, which is their current focus in their English as well as furthering their inquiry work into planets.