In Upper Key Stage Two, their adventure took them to the ancient Mayan civilisation. They travelled in a time machine to learn first-hand what their lives were like all those years ago.

At one point in the adventure, the children made a fascinating discovery in the ‘Yukutan rainforest’. They went outside to imagineer they were in the humid rainforest searching for hidden artefacts. Around the grounds, they found parts of two Mayan pots and managed to put them back together. After making the discovery, they decided to write a newspaper article to inform people. To do so, they looked at an example newspaper and found the key features; decided on the 5Ws; created a quote from a classmate; and then wrote their final newspaper article.

When learning about the different roles in the Mayan society, they found out about Mayan warriors and farmers who used weapons. They heard from a Mayan craftsman (teacher in role) who was going to a market to sell his weapons but wanted their help to sell them. First, they completed a gallery walk to answer some key questions about the weapons and then wrote fact files about some of these after reading some information about them. Next, they chose one weapon to focus on and wrote a persuasive post it for it. Their SPAG objective was to use modal verbs and higher-level verbs so they completed a burn 2 learn to sort them. Finally came their finished advert.

The children found out that the Mayans wore headdresses as a sign of status and power. After learning about what the different groups of society would wear, they had to design one with a particular type of Mayan in mind. Following their design, they made elaborate headdresses. After making their creations, they gave opinions on others for what they liked and what they would improve. Using this, they wrote detailed evaluations following a set of questions.

Towards the end of the adventure, the children went on a trip to Cadbury World where they learnt about the Mayans association with chocolate. Following the trip, they wrote recounts by ordering the main parts of the day and looking at using past tense correctly.