Our focus in guitars is phenomenal. We are all learning how to play in time with the music, playing the appropriate chords and singing along! A lot of fun has been had during this learning. Mr Wilkinson was incredibly impressed with their progress. An incredible skill being taught.
In Expedition, Crew Wilkinson have moved onto Case Study 2 focusing on being a geographer. We began by exploring maps, symbols and our local area. Using a key, we were able to identify our own school, local golf courses, roads, woodlands, places of worship and most importantly Bullcroft Colliery! These skills will support our understanding as we explore maps further. We will be identifying changes over time and locating previous mines across the UK! Great start Crew Wilkinson.
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.
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.
To hook us into our learning, we are going on STRIKE! Today, we have learnt all about the coal mine strikes and the reasonings as to why these took place. We were shocked to find out that 142,000 people actually went on strike when Margaret Thatcher tried to close 20 mines in 1984. Did you know that people who didn’t go on strike were called scabs?! Inspired by what we have learnt, we are planning our own strike! We have decided that school uniform should be a thing of the past! This afternoon, we have designed and created placards which we are going to use when we go on strike later in the week. Keep your eyes peeled – we may just march past your house!
We began our second case study (Art) by evaluating and analysing works of art by various artists including some works by Jonathan Yeo. We discussed as a class What we liked about certain portraits and why. During a gallery walk, we then delved deeper into the choices the artist made e.g. the medium the artist used to create the portrait and why as well as questioning the colour choices and the impact these have on the overall composition. To finish, we began to think about why these people were chosen to have their portraits made and, if we were to make our own, who would we choose?
Today was Written Day where Crew Wilkinson delved deep into the text answering a variety of retrieval, inference and prediction questions about our current text. We then went through our answers as a crew and developed our answers, listening and supporting each other to achieve! What are you reading at home at the moment?
We worked incredibly hard adding mixed number fractions today. Breaking them apart, converting to the same denominator, adding wholes and fractions then converting any improper fractions into mixed numbers. So many steps but we worked hard on our resilience and triumphed. Well done Crew Wilkinson!
Today, we worked with our shoulder partners to skim and scan for information (as well as retrieving knowledge we already knew) about Martin Luther King Junior, why he was important and what change he instigated. We discussed and witnessed how captivating he was as a spokesman for equal rights. His language is full of metaphors which we broke down and put them into our own words.
