Geography
This afternoon, we used maps and iPads to locate the rivers in Doncaster and the UK. We really enjoyed finding the River Don that runs through Doncaster and then expanding our search to finding rivers in the UK finding other well known rivers such as Thames, Severn, Ouse and Humber.
Today we had the great pleasure of another ‘experience lesson’! This was due to us being able to welcome a visitor into our school called Kerry Poncia (a teacher at XP) who unfortunately had first hand experience of the floods in Fishlake (in 2019) and came to share her experience with us all.
We started the lesson by recapping our current book, ‘FLOOD’, and completed a ‘silent conversation’ listing the questions that we would ask the characters from the book. Such as, how did it feel when you had to leave your home? What was it like seeing your home ruined? Have you ever had to leave your home before? Etc. This then led us to then think of some questions that we could ask Kerry prior to her visit. We recorded these on a large sheet of paper ready for her presentation in the afternoon.
In the afternoon, Kerry visited and she provided us with lots of information about floods to support us with our writing next week. It was a great afternoon and as you can see we were all hooked in by what she was saying! Mrs Elmer recorded lots of facts and emotive language so that we can use this word bank to further support our chotting and writing of plot points next week.
Today in Crew Thompson, we celebrated World Ocean Day! World Oceans Day is all about protecting the ocean. A healthy planet needs a healthy ocean, but our waters face huge risks from overfishing, climate change, and plastic pollution. Luckily, we can help! We came up with lots of great ways to protect our oceans such as: recycling, picking up our litter and not using as much plastic.
This afternoon we welcomed lots of our grown ups into school to show them our current extraordinary expedition work, ‘Earth Shattering Events’, ‘What happens when nature strikes?’. We enjoyed sharing the work that we completed during Hook Week (making a volcano, earthquake simulation, walking through water and Earth Day celebrations!), as well as the Science (rocks and soils) and Geography (mountains) coverage from Case Study One.
We also got the opportunity to share our fabulous writing including our Lava recount and our broadcasting scripts.
Thank you to all of the grown ups (and newborn babies!) who came to share their child/rens learning this afternoon. It was lovely to see how proud the children were of the beautiful work that they have been producing.
We look forward to sharing the rest of our learning with you all in July at our COL Event on Wednesday 12th July! We hope to see you then! 😁
This week we have been exploring the UK weather, looking at the landmarks significant to King Charles III.
Today, we sketched and labelled the different parts of a volcano. The children in our Crew worked really hard to understand the different parts of a volcano and certainly enjoyed watching some videos of volcanoes erupting around the world. The children also asked thoughtful questions to extend their own knowledge. Keep up the great work Crew FE!
Today we explored human and physical features of the UK, we looked at landmarks significant to King Charles III and compared the features. Leon’s knowledge was fantastic and he was able to clearly articulate which aspects were human or physical features. Zach also explained physical features were formed by nature, sometimes humans couldn’t control nature and disasters occurred creating new physical features such as an undersea volcano.
The children in Crew FE used modelling clay to create the composition of the Earth. As a crew we discussed the layers of the Earth and how they are different. Some children even asked questions to further their own knowledge which was wonderful, such as: Is the Earth’s core hotter than the sun?
To kick start off our new expedition learning-Earth Shattering Events- Crew Pashley, Crew Thompson and Crew FE participated in various activities throughout hook week. We sketched snapshots of life in Pompeii, to create whole crew storyboards demonstrating what it was like when Mount Vesuvius erupted.
All the crews participated in a carousel of activities and experiments to begin our learning on natural disasters. We made coke and mentos volcanoes, experienced what a cold flood would feel like, and experienced what an earthquake would feel like.
