Tuesday 11th May 2021 - Egyptian Explorers Trip

Please check your ParentMail to pay the £1.80 for this trip. 

We began by thinking about where Egypt is in the world and what the climate might be like there. We became geographical enquirers and learnt how to use an atlas to find out information about a country.

We learnt about the role of archeologists and the different types of sources (not ketchup and BBQ!). We then had a go at becoming an archeologist and went to an excavation site to do a dig!

Whilst there, we found a letter addressed to our old friend Stanley Lambchop! In Guided Reading, we opened it and began to think about some of the clues and inferences we could draw from it. We also began looking at our book for this adventure! 

We decided to help Stanley out and in writing this week, we wrote a reply back to Sir Abu telling him we were on the way - next stop, Egypt!

We thought really carefully about an important part of history - chronology and putting things in time order of when they happened. We completed a big Burn2Learn where we had to get ourselves into time order and Mr Cooper was extra mean and made us do it in silence. It made us realise just how long ago the Ancient Egyptian time period was! 

Nature sure is an interesting and clever thing. As the ground is so dry in Egypt, sometimes crops struggled to grow because they didn't have the right conditions so something called irrigation took place in Egypt. We learnt about what this was and compared the different times of the year in Ancient Egypt. Irrigation doesn't take place anymore as a dam was built to stop it happening.

The good old Ancient Egyptians gave us lots in life which has influenced our lives today. We learnt about one of their greatest achievements and one of the earliest forms of writing - hieroglyphics. Stanley found some on the walls in the museum so we decided to find out mo0re about them and have a go at writing some of our own achievements. We even got to use papyrus which would have been used in Egyptian times! 

We learnt about the significance and importance of cats in Ancient Egypt and in our writing, decided to enter the Young Writer's 'Peculiar Pets' competition (I mean - what gets more peculiar than a mummified cat!?). We learnt about free verse poems and wrote and performed our own.

In Guided Reading, we've been reading The Egyptian Cinderella. Today, we thought about our summarising skills and created freeze frames of some of the significant scenes to help us remember them.

Today, we found out our classroom had turned into a tomb! We met Howard and imagineered a journey into the tomb and had to get down really low on our hands and knees. Then we thought about what we could see, hear, smell, taste and touch in the tomb. We travelled around the room and described the different parts before getting the thesaurus's out and up levelling our adjectives. 

Our setting descriptions are fantastic too! We used prepositions and fronted adverbials to ensure we told our reader where things were in the tomb and we made sure we included all 5 senses.

This week, we were extremely lucky to be treating to a 'virtual school trip' from Leeds City Museum. The children met Natalie who came to us from the museum and told us lots about life in Ancient Egypt. We talked about mummification and got to see the Leeds Mummy (which some of us thought was disgusting!) We also got to get involved and felt a heart, hooked out some brains and smelt what it would have been like in the mummification area! A massive thank you to Natalie and the team at Leeds City Museum for giving us a great Zoom trip in these weird times!

We're halfway through our adventure and we've already learnt LOADS about Stanley's time in Egypt. This week in writing, we're writing a non-chronological report about Ancient Egypt. For our genre and vocal lesson, we did a big Burn2Learn where we built a non-chronological report about Westwood Primary School!

This week, we've been learning about the mummification process. Mr Cooper mummified Reenie at the front of the class and we all then went away and wrote down the steps in the process. It was quite disgusting as he mashed up her brains with a hook and let them drip out of her nose! 

Stanley found out that Sir Abu Shenti Hawara was actually a grave robber planning on stealing from a tomb!! We hatched a plan to build an identical, fake pyramid. We learnt about gears, levers and pulleys and then built a pulley to transport bricks to build the new pyramid. 

After building the fake pyramid last week, this week we were tasked with the mission of selling the fake pyramid in time for getting back to Westwood for the half term holiday. We began by imagineering the different parts of the pyramid and where they were in our classroom. We then wrote fantastic persuasive adverts using exaggeration, wonderful adjectives, prepositional phrases and fronted adverbials. 

To end our Egyptian Adventure, Mulberry and Oak class joined forces for the final afternoon of the half term to create an amazing soundscape to represent Ancient Egypt. We began by playing games to get us into the mood for music, thinking about rhythm and beat. Then, Mr Cooper and Miss Robertshaw gave out the instruments and we were challenged with the mission of creating sounds to match elements of Ancient Egypt such as the river, the tombs and a sandstorm! The children came up with some very creative ideas, some even me and Miss Robertshaw hadn't thought of!