Crew McGlone – Expert illustrator Liz Million

7th May 2025Sarah Mcglone

On Tuesday, Crew McGlone welcomed illustrator Liz Million to our school to support us with drawing skills that we can use within our final product creation – a bookmark including children’s drawings of traditional tales characters.

Liz talked to us about her job as an illustrator, told us lots of stories from her childhood and how she decided she wanted to become an illustrator. She then began to show us many examples of artwork she could create just by simply using lots of different shapes. She showed us how easy it was to create the wolf, Little Red Riding Hood and Grandma’s cat, before then doing a step-by-step draw along to create a troll from Billy Goats Gruff!

We listened so well to each of Liz’s instructions and our final pieces were absolutely fantastic! We cannot wait to put our new skills intro practise when we come to do our final product illustrations. Thank you SO much Liz for coming in and working with us, we are very lucky! We will be sending you a bookmark to showcase our fantastic drawings!

Interviewing an Ex Miner

7th May 2025Laura Hamill

Crew Hamill and Crew Wilkinson were visited by an ex-miner who came to share his detailed experiences of working within the British coal mines. He shared moments of joy and camaraderie with his workers and stories of tragedy when accidents occurred. We were engrossed in his experiences and through this process, we developed a deeper understanding of how more modern mines operated and what a day in the life of a miner was like. Afterwards, the children had many prepared questions to ask to ensure that we got the most from the experience and allowed us to embed our understanding.

You can listen to the interview if you follow this QR code.

UK rivers!

7th May 2025Kate Thompson

In expedition, we have used maps and digital technologies to find rivers and canals in the UK. We found several rivers and canals that flow through Doncaster such as River Don, River Torne, River Went, New Junction Canal and Stainforth and Keadby Canal. We then used the maps and iPads to label the rivers in the UK. To consolidate our learning over the last few lessons, we completed a Kahoot quiz.

Bringing Prehistory to Life with Liz Million

6th May 2025Laura Godley

Today, we had the exciting opportunity to work with author and illustrator Liz Million! Drawing inspiration from the prehistoric world, we explored the time when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. With Liz’s expert guidance, we brought ancient landscapes to life, creating cartoon illustrations of a prehistoric volcano erupting in the age of dinosaurs. This hands-on experience not only enriched our learning in science and history but also sparked our creativity and imagination.

Dangers in The Mine

6th May 2025Laura Hamill

Crew Hamill deepened their understanding on the early conditions of the mine from last lesson by exploring the dangers that people faced due to these conditions. To begin with, we looked at some artefacts that would have been used within the mine (helmet, gloves, pickaxe etc.) and discussed what these told us about working in a mine (e.g you could hit your head, get blisters on your hands, be injured by the pickaxe). We then worked in mini crews to create freeze frames of some mining situations that all involved a danger. Can you guess what these are from our photos?

Following this, we worked in threes to conduct interviews in which one of us was a miner in a given scenario and the others asked questions about the dangers. You can see some of our interviews here:

To consolidate our learning, we created a ‘wall of dangers’ by each writing a danger on a brick.

Feature Finding

6th May 2025Laura Hamill

Today, Crew Hamill had their second experience lesson in which they were identifying the features of a non-chronological report. We worked as a crew to look at an example report, sharing ideas about what we noticed – the title, paragraphs and pictures etc. We then looked at a ‘non-chronological report checklist’ and used this to identify further features such as subheadings and an introduction. Once we were comfortable that we understood the features, we worked in pairs to organise a non-chronological report that had been jumbled up. We had to work out which subheading matched which paragraph, identify the title, introduction and conclusion, and then figure out which order we would put the information in before deciding where the pictures would go. Once we had done this, we labelled each of the features and explained why they were important. To consolidate our learning, we played ‘checklist challenge’ in which we had 3 minutes to write down as many features as we could remember before seeing who had remembered the most!

Uses of rivers

1st May 2025Kate Thompson

Today, we looked at the different ways in which we use rivers. We first started by exploring the rivers and canals that flow through Doncaster. This included the River Don, Stainforth and Keadby and New Junction Canals. We recognised a couple of the photos which were taken in Doncaster. Then we looked at the uses of rivers and canals. We found that we can use rivers for transportation, leisure, irrigation, hydroelectric power, drinking water, habitats and ecosystems, and fishing. We then matched the use to the impact that it can have on the environment. Some of them had both positive and negative impacts on the environment. For example, people who use rivers for leisure activities such as kayaking and canoeing are improving their physical and mental health but they could pollute the waters and destroy habitats.

Memory Jars

1st May 2025Tracy Haddock

Lovely afternoon making memory jars. The child wrote down 6 memories and then linked each memory to a colour. Next, they put 6 piles of salt on each memory and coloured the salt. They poured it into their jars so that they could keep their memories with them.