It’s a new year which means a new adventure!
 

We all began in the hall as Mr Cooper, Mr Hayes and Mr Ashford had received a delivery to school over the holidays and they wanted to wait to open it with the children. It was very heavy and had fragile stickers all over it. Mr Cooper opened the box and brought out the items. They were very strange and we were all very confused as to where they had come from. We had some time to look through them and do some investigations. 

Inside the box, we found a letter from a warrior asking us what life was like in 2022. We decided to write back to them in our writing lessons this week. We looked at examples of letters and tried to guess our first Wizard Words of the year based on exciting words in our example. 

In history, we have begun to think about timelines and chronology. We thought about how we find out about life in the past and the role of archaeologists. We then built a human timeline thinking carefully about which side was BC and which was AD. 

In geography, we have begun thinking about how the world became populated, tens of thousands of years ago. We acted out the journey by imagining each table was a continent and moved between them. Then we created 3D maps to plot the journey of man in groups. I’m sure you’ll agree that they look fantastic!!

We have been learning about housing this week in history. We found out about the houses throughout the three periods of the Stone Age and then had a go at creating our own Palaeolithic code, building our own Mesolithic mud hut and exploring Skara Brae in VR! 

At the request of some children, this link will take you to the website for the VR where we explored Skara Brae for you to try at home! 

Whilst learning about housing, we stumbled across the ‘luxurious’ Skara Brae Inn. We explored the hotel and were disgusted with our experience and the conditions of the hotel - there wasn’t even a roof or toilet! After imagineering a night there, we decided to write an argument as to why it needed to be shut down!

In RE this half term, we have been learning about the creation stories and comparing these to each other as well as comparing them to our historical learning about the creation of man. We read the Christian and Jewish creation story and then had to match the pictures to statements from Genesis. 

The excitement was REAL around Lower Key Stage 2 today as the children were visited by a very strange man indeed! Grugg the Caveman appeared on the field and put the children through their paces in caveman training! They learnt how to aim using archery, they hunted for their meat and they gathered their berries and mushrooms. The afternoon ended around the fire pit as Grugg discussed with the children what they had learnt and confirmed they had all passed basic Stone Age Warrior training!

In RSHE this week, we have began thinking about democracy and what it means to live in a democratic society. We learnt features of both a democratic society and dictatorship and thought about which we are in and which we'd prefer to be in and why.

Our text of the week in Guided Reading is Stone Age Boy. We will be using this fictional story, with historically accurate parts, to build our inference skills and to help consolidate our history learning!

We had an amazing time at Leeds Discovery Centre. Thank you Emily for a fantastic afternoon exploring artefacts! Click the link below to see what we got up to!

We learnt about the role of an MP in RSHE this week. We then wrote our own manifestos and voted for our MP for Oak Class Constituency. 

In history and art this week, we explored cave art. First we looked under the tables and imagined we were inside a dark cave. We then recreated our own piece of cave art and took part in quite a tricky retrieval practice where we had to use all of the words to describe our art and remember why they did it!

We decided to write a story based on some cave art. We built a story mountain to begin with and learnt about expanded noun phrases, speech and fronted adverbials. 

In geography, we have been learning about Stonehenge and it's location. We found out lots of information about the place and began to think about why it was significant. 

For homework, we created some impressive Stonehenge models out of cake and biscuit! Well done everyone!

We became Westwood History Detectives when learning about the Bronze Age and thought about who the different artefacts might have belonged to and what they were used for.

We then found out about Iron Age houses and used information to design our own Celtic roundhouses.

In writing this week, we found out about non-chronological reports. We analysed some and picked out the features. Then we played Wizard Word Olympic Games to make sure we really understood this week's vocabulary and how we could use it in our writing.

In DT, we found out about foods from the Iron Age and how they would have been sourced. We also created Iron Age Oatcakes and wrote a set of instructions about how to make them.

We ended our Adventure by visiting the Westwood History Museum with our parents. At the event, we showcased all of our amazing work from this half term and got to explore the rest of the school's history learning. Click on our Parental Involvement Tab to see what we got up to!