Expedition in MI

15th May 2024Stacey McClare

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.

Citizenship Crew

15th May 2024Laura Hamill

Today, in Citizenship Crew, we continued our learning on ‘Aiming High’. Following our last few sessions which have focused on our achievements and goals, we looked at what it means to be “always learning” and why this is so important. We discussed the importance of having a positive learning attitude and the difference between a growth mindset (in which we have a ‘can do’ attitude) and a fixed mindset (in which we have a ‘can’t do’ attitude). We then had to practise being positive learners by taking part in two challenges. The first challenge was to draw a house shape with a cross through it. This seemed easy enough to begin with but then we were told we weren’t allowed to take our pen off our whiteboards and we weren’t allowed to go over the same line twice! This definitely tested some of our positive attitudes and a few of us felt like giving up. However, we powered through and worked out there are actually a few different ways to do this successfully. This helped us to understand that not everyone does things the same way but that this can still lead to the same, successful outcome. Our second challenge involved using tangram pieces. All we were told to do was to use the shapes to ‘make a fish’. At first, we had no idea what to do and lots of us realised we were in a fixed mindset and almost gave up. However, after a few clues, we were able to do this successfully too!

Practical Maths with Money

15th May 2024Laura Hamill

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!

Maths in MI

14th May 2024Stacey McClare

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 🙂

Book talk continues in MI

14th May 2024Stacey McClare

We loved our entry ticket today where we tried to work on our fluency and speed by reading as many words as we could in 1 minute. It was important we didn’t read too fast as Mrs McClare would be asking questions after reading! Once we had read, we shared something that had happened with our partners then with our table, then with the whole crew. Mrs McClare asked us some questions too, “what verb was used instead of said? What does the word disguise mean? Can you put the word into your own sentence? Who else has to have a disguise? What is a corpse? What is a vow of secrecy? Why is this important after what we read yesterday? Do you agree with secrecy?’ We then unpicked any vocabulary we had text marked. We then read the text again using a chorus read and read around the robin. We really tried to use the punctuation when reading, pausing at commas, using expression for speech and taking a breath after a full stop. Our reasons to read really showcased that we had understood what we had read and our exit ticket allowed us to make predictions about the next part of the story. A great session in MI today 🙂

Mental Health Week continues in MI

14th May 2024Stacey McClare

In crew today we reflected on the piece of work we started yesterday before recapping bullying, what bullying is and how bullying can affect our mental health causing negative feelings. We linked our discussions back to our session last week and to our expert session. We then discussed that different feelings are experienced in different parts of our bodies. We looked at a variety of different feelings including being angry, shy, proud, confident, bored and happy then thought about which parts of our body tell us when we have these feelings. We discussed when we get sweaty hands or shaking hands, butterflies in our tummy, our heart beating quickly, seeing red and also feeling tearful. We shared times we have felt these different things. We then moved onto thinking about why? We discussed that when we experience uncomfortable feelings, it is our body’s way of saying that we need to change the situation. We discussed the different things we may do. Some of these included sharing our feelings with a trusted friend or adult, writing down how we feel, drawing an image or doodling to show our feelings or doing something positive like walking. From here we moved onto body image where we discussed that our feelings can be affected when we feel like we need to look a certain way, wear certain clothes and have our hair a certain way. We discussed that this can cause us to have low self esteem as we don’t feel good enough. We also discussed how the media can have a massive impact on this too.

We then continued to work on some of the work for our final product 🙂 We are really enjoying our crew sessions 🙂