We were peasants and candlemakers

27th September 2024Nicola Robson

For our second case study we are exploring what life was like in a castle during medieval times. We learn about the Feudal System and how the higher up the feudal system you were the more power and money you had. We began by experiencing life as a peasant by doing lots of hard jobs such as cleaning and sweeping.

For our next job we became candle makers. We talked about how there was no iPads, phones, TVs or electricity in a castle during the 12th Century so children had to find other ways to entertain themselves. No electricity also meant no lights so candles were essential.

I wonder what jobs we will experience next!

WW2 Wartime Food in Crew Godley

26th September 2024Laura Godley

Today we discussed the need for making rations spread further and creating meals from the foods people had available, including those they had grown in the ‘Grow for Victory’ campaign. We explored a range of recipes, looking at the ingredients needed and the method involved. We discussed that as ingredients were rationed, this made the recipes really simple. We worked together to make a wartime foods – carrot cookies, carrot fudge, sweet potato chocolate spread and cauliflower pie. Once we had created our wartime food we discussed how the dishes in WW2 were different to our favourite meals today. The sweet potato chocolate spread certainly didn’t taste as sweet as it does today!

Ordering numbers to 10,000

26th September 2024Laura Hamill

To consolidate our learning on ordering numbers to 10,000, we each became a 4-digit number! To begin with, we were able to choose any 4-digit number we liked but then we were given specific criteria for our numbers. For example, each digit had to have a different value. We then had to order ourselves from smallest to biggest or biggest to smallest, depending on the instruction we were given. We worked really hard to make sure that the value of the person to one side of us was bigger than us and the value of the person to the other side was smaller. We used our maths vocabulary to have a conversation about why we should be in a certain position. For example, “My tens column has a higher value so I have to bie bigger.” Shoutout to Jenson who was able to become the teacher during this lesson and instruct people where they should be going and why! To end our lesson, we were given four 4-digit numbers that we had to order from smallest to biggest on a whiteboard. Miss was very excited when we all managed to complete this independently!

Showing resilience in PE

26th September 2024Laura Godley

Today in PE, we had some really tough team challenges to complete. Our first challenge was to order ourselves in various positions on including our birthdays, height and shoe size, without leaving the bench! Only one person was allowed to communicate which is always a tricky challenge in our crew!

We then moved onto ‘cross the river’ with the same rules applying. I was so impressed with how the children worked together, communicating silently to ensure they achieved their goal.

The Blitz continues in MI

25th September 2024Stacey McClare

Today we continued to explore a range of pictures focusing on The Blitz. Todays activity built on our learning yesterday but allowed us to record some of our own thoughts and ideas. We explored a picture then recorded the things we could see. We used the sentence stem I think… to generate our own ideas then wrote down some of our wonders. We then looked closely at 2 pictures where we summarised what we could see, what we thought was happening and what they made us wonder. From here we compared each picture thinking about similarities and differences.

Building Background Knowledge – Movement of the Planets

24th September 2024Laura Hamill

Today, we began building our background knowledge on our solar system and how the planet within it orbit (move around) the Sun. We worked in mini crews to make notes as we watched videos that detailed each of the 8 planets and how they each orbit the Sun. Every time we watched something new, we changed the colour of our pen to build upon the knowledge we had already gained from the previous video. We are going to use this knowledge to write a paragraph of what we now know about how the planets move in our next expedition lesson.

Ordering 4 digit numbers

24th September 2024Laura Hamill

Today, Crew Hamill used their place value knowledge to begin ordering 4 digit numbers to 10,000. We used our place value arrow cards to build our numbers so that we could visually see the numbers we were working with. We then began following the steps needed to decide which order they should go in, whether they be in ascending order (smallest to biggest) or descending order (biggest to smallest). We started by looking at the column with the highest value (our thousands) and then working down the columns until we found the digit that would help us decide whether the numbers were bigger or smaller. We were then able to apply this knowledge to some fluency questions in our books.

Dodgeball

24th September 2024Laura Hamill

Crew Hamill have been developing their dodgeball skills over the last few weeks, focusing on the basic skills needed in order to successfully play a game of dodgeball in two teams. Today, we developed our skills further by working on our deflection – using one dodgeball to block a second that is being thrown towards us. We began by working in 3s with one person throwing the ball to a second person who was to deflect it towards the third person. We then put these skills to the test during some mini games. One person in each team had a ‘golden ball’ which they were not allowed to drop. Their role was to deflect any balls that came towards them. BUT, they had to be really careful because if they dropped their golden ball, they were OUT! We cannot wait to develop these skills further in our next PE session!

The Blitz in MI

24th September 2024Stacey McClare

Today we continued our expeditionary learning and started to find out about the Blitz and the impact it had. We looked at the areas affected by the Blitz and how British civilians responded. One of the activities allowed us to explore different pictures thinking about what we could see, what we thought was happening and what we wondered about the pictures. We showed some great collaborative working during this activity and all shared our ideas during our whip around.