Locating Mines of the UK

Crew Wilkinson have been honing their geography skills by navigating maps to locate historic mines across the UK. They’ve been using compass directions—north, east, south, and west—alongside counties, regions, cities, and major roads to pinpoint sites. Their learning has also included key geographical terms, helping them build a deeper understanding of the UK’s landscape and the role mining played in its history. This navigation will aid us in creating our own map of key mines in the UK in our next Expedition lesson.

Man on the moon

Today we started learning about our new book – The Man on the moon. We woke up at 6am and had a cup of tea and toast for breakfast before cycling to the rocket launch pad.

The water cycle!

In expedition, we investigate how water travels around the world. We found out that the continuous movement of water around the Earth is called the water cycle. The four main stages of the water cycle are: evaporation, condensation, precipitation and collection. We set up an experiment to see how the water cycle works. We cant wait to see if evaporation and condensation happens!

Dangers in the Mines

Crew Wilkinson deepened their understanding on the early conditions of the mine from the 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 which helped us empathise with a miner’s plight. Can you guess what these are from our photos?

Finally, we got into the roles of miners and interviewers. We split into small groups and each group was given a role to play based on the experiences in the mine (ranging from young Victorian children in the mine to grown individuals who have worked in the mine their whole life and developed health conditions from the work). This further embedded the children’s understanding of empathy for the miners.

Timeline of Key Mining Events

Crew Wilkinson took a close look at the mining industry, how it has changed over time and the reasons for changing. We started by piecing together a timeline of key events through mining history then began to look at these critically and reason why they might have happened. E.g. Why did the increase of steam trains require more coal? We then categorised these changes into political, social and technological to further embed the reasoning for change.

Festival of Sport

WOW! What an amazing day we all had at the EIS in Sheffield!! We got to experience a range of different activities! Our favourites were goal ball, basketball and rugby! We had some real superstars today who really amazed us! We are so proud of everyone who went, you all tried your hardest, worked together as crew, persevered -even when you found it tricky – and most of all, had lots of fun!