To bring Hook Week to a close, before revealing our guiding question, UKS2 took part in a Virtual Reality experience that immersed them into the rainforest. They got to look at each layer of the rainforest as if walking around it and come face to face with some of the animals that live there including sloths, tarantulas, capuchin monkeys and jaguars. Throughout this experience, the guide was sharing his wide range of knowledge with the children which they were fully engaged with listening to. What a fantastic experience!
The first guiding question the children are going to investigate is “Not all hero’s wear capes. How can I be a hero in my local community?” The first hero which we’re looking at is a Fire Fighter. Crew Barber have started their first week in year 1 by getting creative in making their own Tudor style houses to replicate the buildings which caught alight in the Great Fire of London, we then set our houses on fire so we could see how quick the fire spread. After watching fire safety talks the children then chose to dress up and engage in role play during their outdoor breaktime, acting out scenarios and having a great time!
To continue Hook Week, we focused on the artist Frank Bowling and took part in a gallery walk in which we looked at examples of his work to critique. Following this, we began looking at his medium of choice – oil pastels – and investigated how we can use these with different techniques to produce different effects.
UKS2 all came together in the hall to take part in some across-phase learning to kick start Hook Week. We began by spending some time watching a video that allowed us to immerse ourselves into the rainforest, learning about the different animals and layers of the rainforest. Following this, we became rainforest explorers and worked in mini crews of 4, each investigating one of the four layers of the Amazon rainforest. We used information from around the room and took notes that we then shared on our class Padlet (you can see this if you follow the QR code). Finally, we took part in a Kahoot quiz to test our knowledge and see who had learned the most during the session.
During this lesson, Crew Rankin began looking at animal classification. We began by taking part in a Kahoot quiz to test the knowledge we already had, seeing what we could already answer about the different classifications. Following this, we spent some time taking part in a carousel activity in which we read brief fact sheets about each animal group and answered comprehension style questions about what we had read. Once we had built up our knowledge on each group, we then worked in mini crews to create a class set of google slides that detailed as much information about our given classification as we could. You can see our work following the QR code.
We LOVED our visit from Dr Caragh Whitehead (aka ‘Erik’s Mum’) today! It was so interesting to learn all about the different types of science and learning that it is not always about big experiments but sometimes simply being interested in the world. We also learned that plants are used to make so many every day items that we may not have previously realised! Did you know plants help to make citronella candles and they’re even used in medicines?! It was great to get hands on and be able to explore the plants more for ourselves, using microscopes and our sense of smell to look at plants in more detail.
Todays theme of the day was STEM in the real world. We discovered that STEM stands for science, technology, engineering and mathematics. We started the morning by building a bridge. We started by designing our bridge and then we constructed it using straws and tape. We then tested whether our bridge was fit for purpose.
We then tried to construct a building which was at least 15cm high which would withstand an earthquake. We designed our building first and then constructed it using cocktail stick and mini marshmallows. We also designed a boat with only a piece of foil. We had no other materials and it had to float.
Crew McGlone had a visit from ‘Little City’ who turned our school hall into a… well, little city! The children were able to role play different jobs and we absolutely loved all the different props and costumes! Thank you so much to Little City for coming in and letting us have SUCH a lovely afternoon!
Today the theme of the day was… Health and care careers. To start with, we discussed all the different jobs that come under this theme. We then thought about sub categories- medical and hospital jobs, emotional and mental health jobs and care and community support jobs. From here we thought more about nurses, thinking about if we had ever met a nurse and where. What we thought a school nurse would do every day and why nurses are important for schools. We watched a clip on school nurses, writing down all the jobs the nurse did. We then answered the discussion questions, what was something the nurse did that surprised you? How did the nurse make children feel safe or better? What qualities do you think a good nurse needs? We then finished the sentence… ‘A school nurse helps children by…’ We then assessed our knowledge in a mini quiz!
From here we explored some different scenarios making notes on what we would do as the school nurse. We then got into role, acting out some different scenarios, we played both nurse and patient.
We then moved onto thinking about therapists, exploring what a therapist does and the types of therapists. We then matched different statements to the correct type of therapist. From here we designed our own therapy room, we created a calm space where someone feels safe, calm and listened to. Some children added comfy chairs, coloured walls, plants, a music player, art tables and soft toys! We ended the day listening to some calming music whilst completing some mindfulness colouring.
Crew MT enjoyed listening to a talk from the fire service this morning. They then enjoyed exploring the fire engine, learning about all the different parts!
