Theme

Each term I will be sending home a knowledge organiser these can also be found in the 'Knowledge Organiser' tab. Please encourage your child to read through it and learn some of the vocabulary linked to the topics we will be learning. This will really them to engage in the lesson and will also help you to understand more about the topic we are teaching.

Summer term

Our Autumn 1 theme is... Egypt

Our Key Questions are:

• Why was the River Nile important to the ancient Egyptian Civiliation?
• How was death reated in Ancient Egypt?
• How reliable do you think the historical evidence is, that we use to learn about Anient Egypt?

Spring term

Our Spring 2 theme is... A Passport to Europe

Our Key Questions are:

• What is the European Union?
• Where is Europe?
• Which countries can be found within Europe?
• What is a region?
• What are the human/physical features within contrasting localities?

Lesson 1: What countries are within Europe and where are they?

Lesson 2: What are the capital cities of some of the countries within Europe?

Click on the link to learn a song that names many of the capital cities in Europe.

Lesson 3: What is the European Union and what was Brexit?

EU stands or the European Union.

What the video to find out how how the countries work together as part of the EU.

The EU begin in the 1950s. It aimed to bring countries togethers so they could work together, help each other and made trade links. There were six countries who originally founded the EU. These being Germany, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Neatherlands and Belgium. Over time more countries joined the EU.

The word brexit combines the word 'Britain' and 'Exit'. In June 2016, the UK voted to leave the EU. The vote was extremely close with 51.9% of people voting to leave the European Union and 48.1% of people voting to stay.

Lesson 4: What are the names of some of the mountains, rivers, oceans and seas within Europe?

Children worked hard to research and present to their information to the rest of the class. 

One group presented information about rivers, one group about rivers and one on seas around Europe.  We also had another group who focussed entirely on the UK and the what could be found where we live.

Lesson 5: What are some of the key landmarks within Europe and are they human or physical features?

Lesson 6 : A study of Norway and comparison to the UK

After working so well in groups to research mountains, rivers, seas and oceans around Europe, children completed group work again for this lesson.

As some children produced fact sheets about Norway, the rest of the class, researched interesting facts to present to the rest of the class. We were very interested to find out how similar and different two countries could be even though they were both part of the continent Europe.

Studying Noway also helped us to understand and visualise the setting of the book we studied in English - The Lost Bear.

Autumn term

Our Autumn 1 theme is… Sparks Might Fly

Our Key Question is:

• How did the Industrial Revolution change Britain? BBC Bitesize has lots of information to answer this topic.

Lesson 1: How did the landscape change during the Industrial Revolution?

Lesson 2: How important was the cotton industry in Burnley?

Lesson 3: Where where canals important in this era?

Canals are man made water ways. They were built during the Industrial Revolution to allow industries to move large quantities of raw materials and goods to and from factories.

A canal has several big advantages over using roads. Roads at the time were not as good as roads today.

Firstly a oat, or barge, on a canal is not going to be as bumpy a journey so fragile goods are much less likley to smash on route.

Secondly a canal barge is much larger than a horse drawn wagon and si it can be used to carry much more than wagons.

The third advantage of canals is that, once they are build, they are very cheap to use. If a barge can carry 50 tonnes of coal and it only two men to look after the barge, it saves on wages. The largest wagons on raods can only carry 2 tonnes.

There was also less breakages so factories can have more goods to sell.

As part of the lesson, we explored the importance of locks on a canal.  Click on the link to watch the video How a lock works

Lesson 4: What impact did the steam engine have on the Industrial Revolution?

Part 1 - The steam engines in factories

Part 2 - Stream locamotives

We finished our topic by going on a trip to Astley Hall. This was the end of out Industrial Revolution topic and the beginning of out Plague topic.

We explored the believe around how the plauge spread and how to protect ourselves. We then made our own posie bags. They smelt beautiful.

We worked as plauge doctors! Exploring the colour or urine, we matched these up with the year of birth to find out the illness and possible cure!

  During the dinnertime, we spent time in the walled gardens.

Our second workshop of the day explored textiles. We had a go at weaving.

Our Autumn 2 theme is… The Plague

Our Key Questions are:

• What were the different types of plagues and how did people catch them?
• What impact did the plague have on London?
• What did the plague doctor look like?
• Why did the plague spread so quick?
• What happened in 1666 that reduced the number of deaths from the plague and how do we know? 
• Did the plague spread outside London? 

Lesson 1: What was the plague?

We looked at the words in the well known nursery rhyme 'Ring-a-ring o' roses', and explored how each line explained the impact of the plague. We had already made our little posie bags during our school trip so we had some understanding of this already.

As a class, we explored three different plagues - Bubonic plague, pneumonic plague and septiceamic plague.

Looking at photographs of the time period, we explored why we thought the plague spread so quickly.

Lesson 2: What was the signifficance of the plague doctor?

During out trip to Astley Hall, we had already been introduced to the plague doctor so we started of by recalling the facts learnt from the trip. We labelled pictures of the plague doctor, explain the signiffiance of everything they wore.  Using role play, we took on the role of the general public and plague doctors. We had great fun examining each other to see if they had the plague and if so, which plague they had. Following our drama, we then write diary enteries as if we were a plague doctor. We developed a great understanding about the sights, feelings and thoughts of plague doctors and how their job differs to doctors we have today.

Lesson 3: What was it like to live in London during the plague?

After reading the 'Orders of the Lord Mayor of London' concerning the Plague, we realised that his instructions meant that there were lots of jobs needed to try and stop the spread of the disease. After learning about the jobs of the doctors, shopkeepers, searchers, hunters, examiners, constables, watcher, bellmen and corpse bearer, we took part in drama excercises. We had great fun developing different senorios to fully understand the signiffiance of each job role.

Lesson 4: Who was Samuel Pepys and what did he tell us about the plague?

We learnt the difference between the words epidemic and pandemic.

Then we explored the Mortality Bill and found out the reasons for some of the deaths during the plauge.

We already knew a little about Samuel Pepys from our topic of The Great Fire of London, which we learnt about in Year 1.Today we read extracts from his diary from the time of the plague. After reading his diary we took on the role of reporters. Some of us were news reporters and some of us were Samuel Pepys. The reporters interveiews Samuel Pepys about his thoughts, feelings and views on the plague. We then used that information to write newspaper articles.

Lesson 5: Did the plague spread outside London? What happened in Eyam?

Using maps and atlas' we located London. We then heard about other areas affected by the plague. We learnt how a little village in Derbyshire became infested by the plague and locaged Eyam with the maps and atlas too.

Reverend William Momprsson who who worked in the village, and his wife, had a plan to contain the plague and stop it spreading to nearby villages. One of the most important parts of the plan was to set up a Cordon Sanitaire or quarantine. This was a line which went around the outskirts of the village. No Eyam resident was allowed to pass it. They also had signs, warning travellers not to enter the village.

The village still needed goods and supplies though. The Earl of Denonshire helped by providing supploes that were left at the southern boundary of the village. Villages left their money in a water trough that was filled with vinegar as they realised that vinegar helped to kill the disease. Chursh services took place in the open air rather than people sitting together on pews and those that died were buried as quickly as possible, reducing the risk of the disease spreading further while people were waiting to be burried.

Although the village of Eyam saved many lives by preventing the spread of the plauge, it did mean that the their had a very high propotion of deaths with 260 people dying out of the 800 residents in the village. Some families were wiped out completely.

Lesson 6: What happened in 1666 that caused the decline of the plague?

There is a lot of information about the plague that can be found on the BBC Bitesize website.