Autumn 1 - Euromazing
Euromazing
With Brexit still ongoing and tensions rising, we have decided to take matters into our own hands! We want to make sure that everyone in Europe stays friends no matter what the outcome may be.
We plan to visit different countries in Europe where we will learn about their cultures, geography, history and traditions.
Euromazing Songs
We'll be learning lots of amazing new songs during our Europe journey.
England: God Save the Queen
Scotland: Mairi Campbell And Dave Francis - Auld Lang Syne
France: Fere Jacques
Italy: Dean Martin - That's amore
Greece: ABBA - Mamma Mia
Our main adventure song will be "We're all in the together" to remind us our goal for this adventure... To reunite Europe again. Learn the lyrics below! Why not try and learn the dance moves too? Don't forget to replace "Wildcats" with "WESTWOOD"!
Brexit, The EU and England
We saw a new headline about Brexit and how we risk not being friends with the other countries in Europe anymore as we’ll be leaving the EU. We decide that it is really important to stay friends with all the countries in Europe and go on a trip around the continent to learn about the cultures, geography, history and traditions of these amazing places. We start by learning about Europe and the countries within the EU. We used atlases to help us find all of the countries that are members.
Next we learnt about Brexit and what it actually means! We worked in groups to create a poster about the Brexit that we would like to see.
After that, we thought it was important to learn all about the UK and the countries within it since we would all be leaving the EU. We used atlases to find the different countries and cities around the UK.
We then learnt about compass directions and how we would get to different cities using an 8 point compass. We then decided to focus in on our home country of England. We learnt lots of facts and created a fact file.
Then we explored London and found out how it had grown over the years! We completed a Burn2Learn where we had to match the landmarks with their facts. We also created a timeline of how London had changed and its significant events. Whilst in London, we took a tour on an open top bus! We imagined that we visited London with our friends to visit the amazing sights. We wrote all about them in a setting description.
Ireland, Scotland and Wales
We then started to explore the other countries which are park of the UK. First stop was Scotland. We learnt all about it and filled in a fact file.
Then we went to Wales. We filled in a fact file here too.
We started to notice a common theme about the countries in the UK. They all had their own mythical stories! George and the Dragon, the Loch Ness Monster, The Red Dragon and Giants Causeway. Inspired by these great stories, we decided to create our very own dragons! We did a build-a-dragon lesson where we stopped at different stations to build our own dragons and used adjectives to describe them.
We then wrote our very own dragon description using lots of adjectives.
We really wanted to create our own mythical story! So we planned our story and made sure that the dragon we had created landed a starring role.
Our final stop in the UK was Ireland. We noticed lots of flags in Ireland! They were decorated with different families’ Coat of Arms. We had a try at creating our own.
France
We then took a trip to France! We had to make our very passports as we were leaving the UK. We travelled on the Channel Tunnel!
Once we arrived, we learnt all about France and completed our next fact file.
We then visited the Louvre where we saw many famous paintings by different artists! We saw the Mona Lisa and decided that she was a little outdated, so drew our own versions to bring her into 2019.
We then wrote a persuasive leaflet persuading adults to bring their children on a holiday to France as we were having such a fantastic time! We thought that all children should visit here too. To help us, we looked at lots of different leaflets to get some ideas.
We then had a look at some work by Picasso. He painted some very funny pictures and we drew a picture of ourselves in the style of Picasso. Can you recognise any of us?
We also had a look at the beautiful “Lillie pond” by Monet. It reminded us of our own pond at Middleton Park. So we took a trip there and sat by the pond painting our very own watercolours just like Monet.
Italy
Our next stop was Italy! We had a look around and wrote our fact file.
We then found out that Boris John had said, “I’ve had enough of this Brexit rubbish! I think we should leave England and move to Italy.” Before we packed our bags, we wanted think about whether this was a good idea or not. So we completed a Burn2Learn where we thought of everything that England has, that Italy has and what they both have.
We then turned these ideas into a balanced argument. We completed another Burn2Learn where we looked for different conjunctions and adverbials that we could use within our balanced argument.
All that arguing made us hungry! We wanted to try some of the Italian food. We weren’t a fan of most of the food as they had very strong flavours!
However, we knew we loved pizza so we made our very own! We designed our perfect pizza and then worked carefully to prepare our meal. They were delicious!
We then wrote instructions on how to make our perfect pizza. We completed a Burn2Learn where we had to order the steps and then add fronted adverbials in the correct places.
After that, we evaluated our creations and thought about what we would change to make our pizzas even tastier!
Poland
Next stop… Poland! We learnt all the facts and we were very lucky to have Miss Oszczygiel teach us some Polish phrases.
As we were in Poland, we learnt a little about Auschwitz. We learnt about how cruel people were to the Jewish community. Because of this, we thought it was important to learn more about Judaism. We started by locating were Judaism was founded and the important places within it.
We then learnt about the 10 commandments and decided to create our own. During guided reading, we learnt about a very famous Jew, Anne Frank.
We then imagined what it would be like to be told you had pack your most precious items and go into hiding. We had 5 minutes to pack our favourite things. Then the air raid siren sounded and we had to escape! We ran as quickly as we could to find a hiding space that Miss Martin had arranged for us. We wrote about our traumatic experience in our very own diary, just like Anne Frank.
We also learnt about special places in Judaism and what we might find in a synagogue.
We learnt about Jewish festivals and celebrations. We created our very own Seder Tray with food that has meaning to us.
We had great fun writing our names in Hebrew which is the language that Jews read in the Torah.
Finally, we learnt about the meanings of Jewish symbols and created our own Hamsa.
Greece
Our final country was Greece! We completed our fact file so that we knew a little more about Greece before we explored the area.
We really enjoyed listening to the Greek music! We thought we should create our very own instruments. We started by completing a Burn2Learn where all we had was a picture of a Greek instrument. We think about its name, the sound it creates, how it is played and the materials it was made from. Miss Martin then told us the answers and we guessed a lot correctly!
We then chose one of these instruments to make ourselves. We had to think about what materials we will use, how it will work, how to make high and low sounds and how to make loud and quiet sounds with our instrument.
We had a great time making our fantastic Greek instruments! We either stuck to the modern colours of blue and white or the ancient colours of orange and black.
We wanted to sell our fantastic instruments so we wrote our very own persuasive adverts using contractions to keep it short and snappy.
Greece and Science
We realised that we didn’t know much about Greece and its island so we did lots of research to find out everything about this wonderful country.
Miss Martin told us that Boris Johnson had made a silly statement again. He had said that, “Greece is boring and I’m amazed it’s even in the Europe. If you ask me we should ask them to leave.” We were outraged and decided to write a speech that we could read out in parliament to stop Boris Johnson from making this happen.
We had great fun making our instruments but we wanted to know how we were able to hear the sounds! We started by thinking about all the different sounds we could hear and went on a sound hunt around the school.
We then wanted to find out how our ears worked. We labelled the parts of the ear and wrote a story board about how the ear works and makes us hear sounds.
It was then time to do some investigating! We used the pan pipes we made to think about how pitch is created and how we can change the volume.
We then thought about how sound decreases over distance. We started by playing music from a phone outside and walked backwards until we could no longer hear it.
We then wanted to see how phones worked over distance. So we made our very own! We learnt that the vibrations travel down the string because it is a solid.
After making so much noise we wanted to learn how to block it. A band wrote to us and asked us to help them sound proof their studio. So we conducted a test and found that feathers and down that was inside a coat blocked the sound out the most. This is because the air pockets helped to absorb the sound.
Finally, we evaluated the instrument we made and used our new science knowledge to explain how our instrument works.
Now that we had made friends with everyone in the EU, we wanted to host a party to show our friends and family what we had been up to, so we wrote an invitation.
Eurown Country
We wanted to test and evaluate the instruments that we’d made and wrote this up to explain what we’d learnt.
After visiting so many wonderful countries, we thought it would be fun to create our own! We designed our own map. We completed a Burn2Learn where we used prepositions to describe where we were with our partner and then used these prepositions in our setting description of our own country.
We also designed our very own flag for our new country.
Our friends and family had a great time at our Euromazing party! They had a try at everything we’ve done of this half term. They became artists and created pieces like Mona Lisa and Picasso, made telephones and tried some different European food.