Which is more significant – the survival of humans or the natural world?
We have stared our enquiry by discussing key questions and things we want to find the answer to in order to help us along our educational journey! Our questions were deep and thoughtful as you can see below!
We are using the book “The Explorer” by Katherine Rundell and have learnt about lines of longitude and latitude in order to plot co-ordinates of the possible plane crash location along the Amazon river. We’ve also used an atlas to locate and name countries in South America and have learnt about the different biomes of the world. It was great to hear some children recalling their knowledge about this from Minecraft!
We have also started working on our netball skills and have been exploring how best to use space and how to do a chest pass.
As part of our enquiry, we have been exploring the properties of materials in order to understand how they can be used for different purposes. There was lots of discussion as we investigated and sorted a box of objects!
After our initial investigations, we applied this knowledge to consider and choose materials suitable for a den. The children put there ideas into practise demonstrating great team work and problem solving! Watch out for this experience to be presented as instructions for our survival guides!
During our Maths lessons, there is a real buzz! We have enjoyed developing our knowledge of the value of numbers up to one million and have been using this understanding to compare and reason about number.
Linking to our survival enquiry, our next focus has been...water! We have built on our knowledge of liquids from last year and learnt what a mixture is. The pond water we sourced was a mixture, however it was dirty, so we needed to separate this mixture with the aim of cleaning the water. We had a range of different materials and resources and were left to explore how successful they were independently. We were amazed by the results and learnt that filtration was the best method - either by material, tights or filter paper!
Building on our knowledge of the stages of the water cycle from last year, we explored how evaporation, condensation and precipitation could be applied to the concept of recycling water!
We have had some great discussions in PSHE this term and have been very mature with understanding people’s rights to love who they want to love. The children were very passionate to share that love is for anyone of any race, gender, religion or ability. The class wrote some beautiful poems to share these important messages.
In our Geography lessons, we have been exploring how maps support survival. We looked at some maps drawn by Percy Fawcett and annotated what we could learn about an area by exploring them! We then learnt how maps were represented today and walked in the local area to make observations for our own maps. We used OS symbols to show the roads in our locality and key buildings. Our walk gave us the opportunity to apply what we had been learning in the classroom linked to our Travel Safety Day.
In our class reading time, we have been reading The Explorer. The children will be using this book as inspiration for their own flashback narratives which will take the reader deep into the Amazon rainforest. To learn how to do this, the children have been using the animation ‘The Piano’ to explore how characters and atmospheres are created in addition to a successful transition to the past.
As we start to move our enquiry into exploring survival of the natural world, we have been exploring animals of the Amazon through the art work of Dieter Braun and Henri Rousseau. The children created toolkits for working in the style of Braun and the colour compositions or Rousseau to apply this to creating animal prints. We had a great week exploring the artists and medium and created some amazing art work!
Last term, we participated in the Boston Sports Partnership Cross Country Challenge.This term, we have been set a football challenge! We have been practising our footwork and control skills in order to commit to this competition!
We have been busy in Maths exploring the properties of numbers. We have learnt the difference between multiples and factors and have been applying this knowledge well.
In our reading lessons, we have also been exploring some of the concepts linked to our enquiry question. We have used ‘The Great Kapok Tree’ as a starting point to explore deforestation and also an information text to learn about Machu Picchu and this brought us to a discussion about if tourists should be allowed in such rare and precious places! What do you think?
As the term draws to a close, it has been wonderful to reflect on how much the children have learnt and progressed. We have explored so much under just one enquiry question and the children have applied their geographical and scientific understanding in their essays to summarise our enquiry. It has been such an exciting enquiry and their essay writing demonstrates this!
You can read our essays by opening the PDF file below.