Year 5 pupils were invited to visit Oakland’s science lab where the pupils consolidated their knowledge on states of matter (retrieval from their previous mixtures topic and Year 4 states of matter topic) exploring particles and carrying out a number of separation techniques whilst using a range of apparatus in the lab.

They were tasked to separate the salt from rock salt. Here they needed to create a fair test enquiry and create an experiment. The children decided to mix the rock salt mixture in water, dissolving the salt. They then filtered out the sand which left them with a salty clear solution.

Here they used the bunsen burners to evaporate the water which left behind the pure salt.

Children were put to the test this week with their programming knowledge. We challenged groups to create a ‘Chair o Plane’ fair ground ride that could light up and spin.

In order to do this the pupils needed to create an algorithm on crumble that programmed a microcontroller, sparkles and motors. Here they had to debug programmes, combine components and test and trial algorithm.