UKS2 Presentation of Learning

26th June 2025Laura Hamill

UKS2 were very proud to present their learning to their adults yesterday afternoon. After giving an introduction explaining all about our expedition titled: At The Coalface, the children explained what we had done during our case studies to answer our guiding question: How has the mining industry shaped communities?

Children then got to share their amazing final product – a lapbook that brought all of their hard work from this term together whilst showing off their fantastic artwork. Adults were able to take part in a gallery walk to view their child’s work and were also able to take part in other activites – looking through expedition books, taking part in a Kahoot quiz to test their mining knowledge and an opportunity to create some charcoal art of their own!

Thank you so much to everyone who attended and made it a lovely afternoon!

Charcoal Art

11th June 2025Laura Hamill

This week, Crew Hamill have made a start on Case Study 3 – Art. In our first lesson, we have explored our focus artist of Henry Moore who is famous for being commissioned to produce charcoal drawings of coal miners. We then had a go at experimenting with the medium of charcoal ourselves using different techniques, seeing what effects we could create. Some of us even attempted to draw with it!

Consolidating Maths Learning

5th June 2025Laura Hamill

Today, Crew Hamill consolidated their maths learning on the transition of shapes as we found it a little bit tricky during our first lesson. We began by playing a game in which we had to get a monster around the grid in order to eat all of his lunch. Once we had worked out how to get to each item individually, we worked in pairs to create a maze that the monster could follow to collect all of his meal items in one trip. Following this, we completed a MyMaths lesson to demonstrate our improved understanding. We are now ready to move on to our next maths lesson tomorrow.

Identifying Features of a Map

13th May 2025Laura Hamill

Today, Crew Hamill began their first lesson for Case Study 2 – Geography. We became geographers by looking in detail at maps, identifying what they are, why they are used and what they help with. We also looked in detail at the different symbols that can be found on a map and what they mean. We worked in pairs to match up the symbols to their meaning. Once we had more of an understanding on this, we worked in pairs to identify the symbols on a map of our local area, identifying schools, buildings, dual carriageways, water, railways and more.

Consolidating 24 Hour Time

8th May 2025Laura Hamill

Crew Hamill had a more practical lesson today to help consolidate their understanding of 24 hour clocks. We were ensuring we had a clear understanding of how to convert 12 hour time into 24 hour time by taking part in a carousel of activities.

  1. Matching written times to the correct digital representation.
  2. Completing a table of conversions.
  3. Completing a lesson on MyMaths

Interviewing an Ex Miner

7th May 2025Laura Hamill

Crew Hamill and Crew Wilkinson were visited by an ex-miner who came to share his detailed experiences of working within the British coal mines. He shared moments of joy and camaraderie with his workers and stories of tragedy when accidents occurred. We were engrossed in his experiences and through this process, we developed a deeper understanding of how more modern mines operated and what a day in the life of a miner was like. Afterwards, the children had many prepared questions to ask to ensure that we got the most from the experience and allowed us to embed our understanding.

You can listen to the interview if you follow this QR code.

Dangers in The Mine

6th May 2025Laura Hamill

Crew Hamill deepened their understanding on the early conditions of the mine from last lesson by exploring the dangers that people faced due to these conditions. To begin with, we looked at some artefacts that would have been used within the mine (helmet, gloves, pickaxe etc.) and discussed what these told us about working in a mine (e.g you could hit your head, get blisters on your hands, be injured by the pickaxe). We then worked in mini crews to create freeze frames of some mining situations that all involved a danger. Can you guess what these are from our photos?

Following this, we worked in threes to conduct interviews in which one of us was a miner in a given scenario and the others asked questions about the dangers. You can see some of our interviews here:

To consolidate our learning, we created a ‘wall of dangers’ by each writing a danger on a brick.