We are very excited about our learning in Danes class this term. Our geographical theme is Extreme Earth – we will be learning all about volcanoes and earthquakes as well as other natural disasters. We started our learning by considering what we know already; some of us were able to talk about events happening in the world today. Others had visited parts of the world where events had happened in the past. We took this opportunity to extend our knowledge of where places are in the world by locating countries on our world map. We even enjoyed using a new app on the ipads where we had to locate different countries.
In science, our topic is ‘Evolution and Inheritance’. We have begun our learning by extending our knowledge about fossils and what scientists can learn from them. We will be considering the limitations of the fossil record in our next session. We ended our lesson this week by setting up a ‘Fossil Analogy’ investigation. This involved jelly dinosaur sweets and lots of bread! Different types of bread represent the layers of sediment. Next week, we will separate the layers again and see what has happened!
We are very lucky to have our forest school sessions this half term, we will be taking part in the RSPB Birdwatch. For this we are going to build a bird hide, nesting boxes, providing food etc. We will need to learn to recognise different birds by their varied features – this will link beautifully with our science as we will learn about the work of Charles Darwin. In particular, his work about the finches on the Galapagos Islands.
Our Learning in Religious Education also links well as we are considering the question – Creation and science: conflicting or complementary? We learn so much more and develop a deeper level of understanding when our curriculum is planned in this way to make so many links in our learning.
Later this half term, we will be visiting the Natural History Museum. Here we will be able to: visit the fossil gallery and see for ourselves the famous ichthyosaur discovered by Mary Anning in Lyme Regis (our English lessons are based on a book called ‘Stone Girl, Bone Girl’ which tells her story); watch a show about Volcanoes and Earthquakes; visit a gallery which tells the story of the Earth; experience what an earthquake might actually feel like and discover more about evolution. We always love our day trips linked to our curriculum; they help us to remember so much more and it is wonderful to learn from real artefacts and talk to experts about our learning.