Spring Term Update 2024
What makes the Earth angry?
This has been a thoroughly enjoyable topic for 3JL covering tectonic plates, earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis and tornadoes. We have also looked locally at storm damage to the UK and South Tyneside and taken part in fieldwork to look at storm damage around the school. We interviewed Mr Dunn about how he prepares for storms and how the school is set up for storms to keep us all safe.
Year 1/2 completed some geography fieldwork in their local area. We used Google Earth to decide on 3 sites to visit (field, shops and Raeburn Avenue). When we visited the sites, the children sketched the sites and we discussed what we could see. We then came back to the classroom and discussed the similarities and differences between Whiteleas and a village in Kenya. The children were super excited to be able to visit their local area and tell Miss Hodgkinson where their friends and family live!
Reception are enjoying their ‘Forest School’ sessions at West Boldon Lodge. During one of their sessions the children were asked to search for signs of Spring. They found signs of new life including bugs and insects, new green leaves, daffodils, snowdrops and catkins. We also saw birds nests in the top of the trees and discussed what sorts of birds might have made them. We ended the session by making a ‘Forest Crown’ and decorating it with some of the things that we had found.
During other weeks we enjoyed using the binoculars to look for birds, made bird feeders and a bird box to take to school and ate marshmallows that we toasted on the fire.
The children in Reception enjoyed learning about the Luna New Year and about China. We learned all about what Chinese people do to celebrate it. We tried noodles (some of us were brave enough to use chopsticks) spring rolls and prawn crackers with sweet chilli sauce, made our own dancing dragons and we even wrote our names in Chinese. It was quite tricky but we did a fantastic job!
Autumn Term Update 2023
Even though UKS2’s current Geography unit is Brazil, we still manage to hone our fieldwork skills (just unfortunately not in Brazil!). We explored our local area to see what sectors of the economy were prevalent in our area. Back at school, we compared this to Brazil using the CIA World Factbook.
Year 5 and 4 recently had a working river model of the Tyne come into school to demonstrate the processes and journey of the river. This supported the children in revisiting and refreshing their geography lessons from the end of last year- “Why is the Tyne so important to Newcastle?”
Summer Term Update
Year 6 completed some excellent fieldwork in our local area. Luckily, the sun was shining down as they measured leaves to find the mean length of leaves in our local woodland. They also completed a transport survey as part of their geography unit “I’m a Forest View Pupil get me out of here”
Introducing Alex…
One of our year 6 superstars Alex has recently shown us his amazing map work skills. He draws these maps by hand and also from memory. Such a talent! Cartographer of the future!!!
Spring Term Update
Children in school have loved participating in fieldwork this term.
KS1 have been tracking the weather.
LKS2 have used thermometers to compare the temperature of the UK to Cyprus. They have also completed surveys to find out which Mediterranean country the teachers would most like to visit.
UKS2 have been using the school grounds to compare our biome (temperate forests) to that of the rainforests. To complete their study they have used quadrats, classification keys and a range of maps alongside digital technologies to contrast against rainforests all over the world. Their favourite part was shaking the trees and collecting the invertebrate species which fell from them by catching them on a white sheet.
