Every Hat Tells a Story (Summer 2)
All of the teachers chose a hat as a stimulus for this half-term’s learning. Mr Ward chose the pirate hat! We have brainstormed some initial ideas for what we want to learn and find out about. We are looking forward to some exciting adventures…!
English
As part of our pirate theme, we began the half-term by writing pirate poetry. We discussed what we already knew about pirates and used songs and stories to find out more about them. We imagined what we would do if we were pirates to write our poems.
Our key text is The Pirates Next Door, by Jonny Duddle. We used the book to write character descriptions, write in role as different characters. We also thought about what we might see on our own pirate adventure, writing recounts to describe the different parts of the world that we might visit.
Find out more about Jonny Duddle and his other works by following the link:
Maths
This half-term, we will cover: volume and capacity, time, shape, fractions and statistics. So far, in volume and capacity, we practised reading scales, and making different measures in a measuring cylinder. We have also practised estimating and measuring the capacity of different containers.
Science
In science, we are investigating why things sink or float. So far, we have tested different objects, making predictions before seeing if they sink or float. Following our initial investigation, we have asked questions about what we noticed: Does size matter? Does mass matter? Does the material matter? We will try to find answers to these questions in future investigations.
We have investigated making ‘boats’ using tin foil, and testing how much mass different sizes hold. We found that the larger ‘boats’ held a greater mass.
Steven Lewis Neill came to visit us for one final session before we leave Whitefield. He helped us to explore the changes to all the plants that have happened since spring in the forest school. We also found ladybird larvae, froghoppers, snails and much more! He also helped us to recap what we have learned this year about animals. Finally, we handled a toad, newt, and a mouse. We would like to say a huge thank you to Steven for giving us lots of unique experiences throughout our time at Whitefield!
Art
In art, we are looking at things we find in and near the oceans as part of our pirate theme. We have looked closely at shells and practised sketching them, focussing on line, shape and tone. We have made different sea creatures using clay, and we will look at the different landscapes we might discover if we went on a pirate adventure. We also learnt how to draw pirates, pirate ships, and made our own pirate hats and eyepatches in preparation for our end-of-year carnival.
P.E
This half-term, we are focusing on our striking and fielding skills, and playing a variety of games to develop the fundamentals of agility, balance and coordination.
Design Technology
In DT, we designed, made and evaluated our own ‘pirate cookies.’ We began by tasting ‘ship biscuits,’ also known as ‘hardtack,’ that sailors would eat a long time ago as they did not spoil on their long adventures at sea. They were very bland, so we decided to improve the recipe, either by adding chocolate chips to a cookiedough mixture, or adding melted chocolate on top. After tasting our cookies, we all agreed that they were much nicer than what pirates would have eaten in the past!
If you would like the recipe for ship biscuits, follow the link below:
https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/maritime-history/how-make-ships-biscuit
