What process does a cacao bean have to go through to become chocolate?

In expedition, we looked at the process a cacao been has to go through to become chocolate. We were surprised to find out there were lots of different stages of the process: harvest, fermentation, drying, roasting, winnowing, grinding, conching and tempering. We sorting the names of the process, with the correct description and picture. We then sorted at fair or unfair statements. After this, we did a conscious alley where we dug a little deeper into whether we thought it was fair or unfair.

Book Talk – inference focus

In our book talk session this week we continued to work on our inference skills. We started by reading the text and text marking any words we didn’t understand. We then looked at some inference questions based on what we had read. We had to unpick the question and identify the key words and then use our own knowledge as well as the text to make links.

Expedition in MI

In our expedition lesson today we compared the Egyptians diet to our diet today. We recapped primary and secondary sources then explored different pictures to explore an Egyptians way of life and their diet. We found out that the Egyptians were farmers, growing crops like wheat and barley for bread and beer along with fruit and vegetables. We explored the different types of fruit and vegetables that they would grow then thought about our lives today in Doncaster and what farmers grow today. We discussed importing and exporting food into and out of the UK and how this compares to the Egyptian way of life. Also we discussed the animals that were raised on farms in the Egyptian times and compared them to what we eat today. We thought about why the Egyptians may have eaten more ducks and geese linking to the River Nile and we discussed if we eat in the same way. 

We moved onto thinking about the River Nile, using the learning from our previous lesson to support us. We thought about how the Egyptians caught fish, the size of the nets and what this tells us about the size of the fish in the River Nile. We discussed the advances in technology and machinery and how fishing hasn’t necessarily changed, but the methods of fishing have. Next we moved onto thinking about an Egyptian banquet and what would be included. We compared this back to a typical banquet today and the types of foods we would have. We then discussed the differences in food between the rich and poor people along with what they would drink… beer! This fascinated us!

We then had a go at producing our own Egyptian banquet…


We then thought about the following question… Do you think that the Ancient Egyptians were as healthy as people living in Britain today? We used the sentence starter below to help us. 

I think that the Ancient Egyptians were / were not as healthy as people living in Britain today because …..

Finally we challenged our thinking a little further and discussed if we think it was mostly luck, skill or a combination of both that helped the Ancient Egyptians to eat so well? Our anchor chart shows our thoughts.

Practical Maths with Money

Today, Crew Hamill got to grips with using money in the real world by becoming shoppers and shop keepers! We have our own little fruit and veg shop set up in crew that we were able to visit and spend our pocket money at. We had to figure out which items we could by and decide if we had enough money to pay for them all by adding the prices of them together. The shopkeeper then had to figure out how much change we should get by subtracting the amount we had spent from the amount we paid with. Alongside this, we went on a challenge hunt around the room, deciding which colour challenge we were going to attempt. These challenges had addition and subtraction money problems on them and we had so much fun working out the answers!

Crew Boswell – Exercise

As part of our expedition, we have been looking at the impact exercise has on our bodies (especially our hearts). In this session, we took part in an online fitness workout to get our hearts pumping and really reflect on the impact exercise has on our bodies. We noticed that we’re all very different and exercise affects each one of us differently – and that’s ok. Now that we’ve learnt about the long-term benefits of staying active, we’ll definitely try our best to keep active!

Crew Boswell – Exploring Newspapers

In writing, we have started preparing to write our next piece. We will be writing a newspaper article about the book that we are currently reading. Our experience day was to spend some time reading, comparing and exploring newspapers – their style, content and appearance. Following this, we contributed our ideas to build a picture of what we noticed, what we liked and what we wondered about newspapers as a genre. We’re looking forward to building on these ideas to help us write our own article!

Maths in MI

Our do now allowed us to recap our work on time, using past and to on an analogue clock. We then moved onto our new unit- statistics. We explored pictograms today which we really enjoyed. In magic maths we played lots of games to practise our times tables then we recapped some work on fractions. Some great maths learning in MI today 🙂