Geography
Last week, year 5 took part in a fantastic workshop which consolidated their learning on their autumn expedition and also their expedition around the water cycle last year. The children then worked in groups to create a Lego bot which they then programmed using a computer so it would move on its own to deliver much needed water supplies. The children really enjoyed this but it was also great to see them all grappling and working collaboratively.
Today, Crew Hamill continued with their expedition by looking at Doncaster and other cities around the United Kingdom, learning more about their human and physical characteristics. We focused on how some of these aspects have changed over time, looking at images of Doncaster and organising them into “old” and “new”. It was so interesting to see how our city has changed over time! Do you recognise some of the older buildings?
We continued with our expedition where we looked at a topography maps and what they can show. We learned that Doncaster is between approximately 8-24m above sea level whereas the Peak district is around 400m above sea level.
We estimated the population of the world. Most of us estimated around 7-8 billion.
Next we considered the estimation of London based on the size and population of the other capital cities but unfortunately we were nowhere near for this one. We could imagine there were over 7million people in London.
We looked at different areas around the UK and the population of these areas. To help with our estimation for Doncaster we looked at areas similar in size to this area so we could make realistic estimations. Some great estimations.
Finally, we looked at a range of photos from the past and present of Doncaster. It was interesting to see how much Doncaster has changed over time. There has certainly been an increase in the amount of human features in our local area over the years.
Crew Hamill began their expedition with their first geography lesson this afternoon. We were able to use atlas to identify where Doncaster was on a map and investigate the human and physical features. We then labelled a map of the United Kingdom , focusing on the main cities and towns around Doncaster.
Yesterday, we had visitors from the recycling centre in Doncaster who came to explain what recycling is and the process it goes through. We were amazed to see all the different stages the litter goes through to be recycled. We had a game of “where do we chuck our litter”. The children had to stand by the bin they thought that piece of litter goes in. Charlie smashed it and was our recycling expert!
Today in our expeditionary work we explored the UK and the physical and human features of a village, town and city. The children compared the geographical features and explained how and why these differed. This led to some beautiful discussions around the children’s experiences – especially those children that had visited London. The difference between Doncaster and London city, particularly the difference in population and the transport.
Aubree and Lily-Rose produced some beautiful work which we were so proud of, carefully explains the differences between human and physical features. They were defining working hard, to get smart!
In expedition this afternoon, children explored different places and things in Doncaster and discussed whether this was in the past or the present. We discussed whether these features were human or physical features. We also discussed the population of Doncaster and what impact this has.
Today we built on yesterdays learning in our geography lesson, we compared three places in the UK – we looked at Beeley (village), Skegness (town) and London (city). We compared the different human and physical features of each.
We found out that if you live in a city or town you have more human features.
This afternoon we spent time learning about a compass and the different directions. We firstly looked at the cardinal directions: North, East, South and West.
Then we looked at the intermediate directions which are North East, south east, south west and north west.
Once we knew the directions, we played a game where we had to follow the directions and see where we ended up.
Yesterday afternoon, we braved the cold to go on an adventure. We had to use a series of instructions to guide us around the playground where we found some clues. When we returned to class, we worked together to figure out what they said. When we had finished, we discovered that the clues made up the guiding question.
