Count the squares

As done in Maths today.

Muscles Newsletter Prep

Fold a piece of A4 paper to make a booklet. Ideally use coloured paper (card is fine). The booklet should then have the information stuck on.

First page: Title ‘Looking After Our Muscles' or choose your own suitable title. Then write an article about how someone might get RSI (Repetitive Strain Injury) and how to avoid it.

Second page: Two sketches of someone lifting a heavy box, first in a dangerous way that could cause strain to their muscles, then in a safe way. Label the diagrams appropriately.

Third page: a recommendation of the best sport for exercising as many of your muscles as possible – make sure you give your reasons.

Fourth page: write your name on this but beyond that, leave the page blank as this will be stuck down in your books or on the display board.

You could get information from encyclopaedias, the Internet or a helpful adult!

Due in on Monday 5 November. It is two weeks' worth of prep so make sure it looks like you've spent quite a bit of time on it!

Checklist:

• Name on back


• 3 different articles


• Written in pen/on computer


• Straight lines drawn with a ruler


• No blocks of text copied from Internet


• Reasons for choice of sport have been given (p3)


• Diagrams labelled clearly (p2)

Resources for Life Processes lesson

This time-lapse video shows a plant growing over a four-day period.


This film shows elephants swimming.


This one shows chickens hatching from eggs.


Prep:

A day in the life of a frog

You are a frog. Write a passage describing your day. By the end, it will be clear to the reader that you are alive, because you have proved it by referring to all seven life processes.

For example, if you were describing 'A day in the life of a flower', you might start like this:

In the morning my petals opened up as usual (MOVEMENT). I noticed to my surprise that I am already taller than the buttercups (GROWTH), even though my stalk has started to lean away from the shadow of the tree (SENSITIVITY). I think that it will soon be time for me to drop my seeds (REPRODUCTION). (And so on.)

Then learn the seven life processes for a test.

Checklist:

• Heading?
• Date?
• Heading and date underlined?
• Blue ink?
• All seven life processes named?
• Life processes either underlined or in colour, or in capital letters?
• Learned the seven life processes?

Low impact meals

Think about what makes a meal 'low impact' and bring in written suggestions for what you might eat or not eat, and why.

As we have learned in class this week, 'Low impact' means having as little effect as possible on the environment and on the amount of greenhouse gases. Think about packaging, think about whether the food you don't eat would be suitable as compost, and you might also consider 'food miles'. This means the energy used when the food travelled to you and the CO2 that was emitted as a result of its journey.

This task is not about how healthy the meal is, nor is it about whether the food is organic.

If you have chosen to bring your own lunch to Holme Dunes, then you could write down what you are planning to bring and how you are going to minimise packaging, including napkins. Re-used containers that you will take home again for further re-use are encouraged. Remember that the lowest impact is likely to be caused by food that does not require new packaging (even recycling itself uses energy, though it's better than landfill). Don't try to achieve a zero impact - you should still enjoy your meal!

You could look at these websites.

What 'food miles' are (BBC site), or try this from Wikipedia (less writing but more complex)

This is about food that is 'in season' (BBC), meaning it does not have to be preserved for long, or imported.

Don't look at this American site until after you have already thought about the task for a while. It is full of detail and very readable.

An easy site - only use if you're stuck or confused: activity sheet 1 of this document compares two packed lunches, one low impact, one not.

Finally, this gives more information about Holme Dunes.

Google link

http://www.google.co.uk/doodle4google/downloads/doodles_and_template.pdf

My environmental area

The task is to design an environmental area that will attract British wildlife. Please try to have at least one endangered species.

You will have two A5 sheets of squared paper.

As described in the lesson, one is for a picture of your area, to give an immediate idea what it looks like – it might have a meadow area, a pond, a logpile.

The other is for a plan of your area, to give details of what plants are there, and what animals they will attract.

The picture (a view from above) does not need any writing except for heading and date .

The plan needs the same shapes as the picture, but no drawing, only writing. The writing is about the plants and animals that live in the garden.

For good marks, you need to show that your plants and animals are interconnected. For example, if you want to encourage barn owls, make sure you give them somewhere to nest and to roost. And then make sure there is suitable food for the animals that the owls will feed on.

Please stick the work (landscape) on two pages in your book.

Food Webs

Here is an empty food web. Copy it or print it out, and fit these organisms into the correct spaces:

Moth caterpillars: Tawny owls: Squirrels: Aphids: Trees (leaves, flowers, fruits, bark): Beetles: Bank voles: Foxes: Sparrows.

It is slightly tricky. If you cannot manage to fit them in, you can rearrange the boxes, or make your own woodland food web based on what we did in the lesson. You may want to illustrate it.

Extension: if the number of foxes goes down, what will be the effect on the tawny owl population, and why?

A complex example.

A simple example.

Read more (also has a 'create a food web' activity).