Experience Day – Charlie and the Chocolate factory

22nd April 2024Kate Thompson

In our writing lesson today, we first completed a silent conversation and chotted down notices, actions and feelings that we could see in the pictures from the film. We then watched the clip of Charlie and the Chocolate factory and chotted some amazing vocabulary we could use in our writing. We even used the thesaurus to uplevel this vocabulary. After that, we then put parts of the film in order of which they happened. We did have to watch the clip a few times to make sure we got them in the correct order but this was a great way to get to fully understand the writing journey we will be going on.

Mayan timeline

22nd April 2024Kate Thompson

Today, we looked at when the Mayan civilisation existed. First, we looked at what vocabulary would come up in todays lesson. We matched the vocab to the correct definition. This really got us thinking but we were able to use our knowledge from the Romans and make the links. For example, we remembered that Julius Caeser and Emperor Claudius were rulers of the Roman empire. We then consolidated our learning by sequencing the events. Then we placed the events on the timeline. We had a great discussion about BC and AD and how the numbers descend and then ascend.

Tuna Salad tortilla wraps and a chocolate cacao drink!

19th April 2024Kate Thompson

Finally, we managed to construct our tuna salad wrap which contained many popular Mayan food such as avocado, red chilli pepper, lettuce and tuna. We was super careful when using or chopping and cutting skills to cut the vegetables for the wrap. We really enjoyed our wraps, they were delicious!

We refreshed ourselves after all our hard work with a typical Mayan drink! We mixed some cacao powder with warmed milk and a dash of chilli powder to replicate the ancient Mayas recipe.

Making tasty tortillas

19th April 2024Kate Thompson

In expedition this afternoon, we made our own tortillas after finding out these were a staple food in the Mayan civilisation. We worked in mini crews and worked together (putting or mass and capacity knowledge to good use) and weighed all the ingredients. We rolled the dough and fried it to make the tortilla. We are going to need the tortilla in our next lesson.

Book Talk – The Great Chocoplot

19th April 2024Kate Thompson

In our book talk lessons this week, we started a new book called “The Great Chocoplot” by Chris Callaghan. First, we started off by completing a jigsaw of the front cover. We then discussed what we thought the book may be about, whether the book would be a fiction or a non fiction book and how we know this. We came up with some fantastic ideas such as “the girl on the front cover might have stole a chocolate bar and they are investigating it. We then read some of the book, text marking any important information and words which we don’t understand. We read around the word and looked at the root word to unpick these words.

Blind food tasting

19th April 2024Kate Thompson

In expedition, we have tried different foods whilst our eyes were shut. We were given each piece of food and used our senses to see if we could figure out what it was. First, we touched the food to see what it felt like, then we smelt the food to see if there were any strong smells to identify and then we tasted it. We guessed tuna because of the smell but we struggled with avocado!

Marvellous Mayan masks

17th April 2024Kate Thompson

We have looked deeper into the Mayan civilisation and discovered that they used masks. They had event masks and death masks which were used for different purposes. Event masks were used for celebrations and special events and were vibrant and colourful. Death masks were made from Jade because it symbolises the soul. The people designed their own death masks and were buried with them. We designed our own Mayan mask and cut squares of card out to decorate it.

Crew Hamill and Crew Thompson – Music

16th April 2024Sarah Mcglone

We have continued our work on ‘Latin Dance’ this week by recapping information about Cuban music and how it is influenced. We then practised finding and maintaining a 2-3 clave rhythm, and a 3-2 clave rhythm using untuned percussion instruments. We then applied these rhythms to some traditional Cuban pieces of music.

We practised our piece ‘Latin Dance’, reviewing the lyrics and reminding ourselves of the structure of the piece. We noticed that there were two instrumental parts within the song and we decided to create our own Cuban rhythms to add to the existing instrumental parts.

Once we were happy with our rhythms, we practised the song as a whole, making sure that we were following our conductor to make sure we kept in time with each other and the backing track.