2021/22
During this Learning Experience, Silver Birch Trees will find out all about sustainability and seasonality and how this benefits the environment. We will visit a local farm to see the techniques they use to produce their fruit. We will also be taste testing existing products and evaluating them. Finally, we will make our own quiche using a basic recipe that we have adapted to our own taste!
Loddington Farm Trip! We had a fantastic day learning about sustainability and how important seasonality is to the environment. Thank you to The Country Trust for organising the day!
During this Learning Experience, Silver Birch will be learning about classification. This will involve finding out how living things are grouped based on similarities and differences. We will also be looking at the Linnaean system and how that determines just one type of species within a group of living things.
CSI Day!!
Silver Birch were very lucky to have an exciting first day to the new term! We had a workshop run by PulseCSI, we started the day finding out about DNA and how how it is left behind at crime scenes which enable the police to use the evidence to convict the criminals. We discovered the different types of fingerprints, it might interest you to know that each one of your fingers has it own unique print! We also investigated the different fibres on clothing and what hair follicles look like under a microscope! We were all able to make a keyring of our fingerprint as a souvenir! After lunch, we were transformed into real CSI agents and investigated a crime scene to see if we could use our new found knowledge to find the culprit! We had the best day!
Safety Week
During this week, Upper Key Stage Two will be participating in all things safe! They will be learning about staying safe around school and online. They will be finding out about water safety from RNLI, information regarding NSPCC and Childline. As well as that they will have workshops about drugs and alcohol and road safety. Year 6 will also have talks from Francis from Reform, Restore, Respect charity and from the Magistrates court. Finally, the three classes will spend a whole day learning about fire safety in the home, campfire safety, risk-assessing, first aid and CPR, bike safety and food safety! We will finish the week by invited our parents in to see all the amazing work we have achieved!
During this Learning Experience, we will be looking at the layers of the Earth and how they are made up. We will also be looking at volcanoes and earthquakes and how these natural disasters occur. We will look at tectonic plates and seismic waves and how these are measured. Silver Birch Trees will also be investigating how communities are effected by natural disasters.
For this Learning Experience, Silver Birch Trees will be learning all about the Ancient Greeks. To start with, we will be having a workshop where the children will take part in an interactive timeline before discovering (and trying) authentic Greek food, having a hands-on experience with artefacts and using their new knowledge in a quiz. We will then be conducting our own Olympics in the afternoon! As well as the workshop, children will also learn how the Greeks played an important part in medicine, democracy and religion and how these impact our day to day life now.
During this Learning Experience, Silver Birch will be acquiring new skills! We will be investigating the different types of maps that exist, learning how to read and understand an Ordnance Survey (OS) map in particular. Once we have learnt how to use and read a compass and map, we will be exploring Bedgebury Pinetum by following an orienteering course they offer at the forest!
During this Learning Experience, Silver Birch will be acquiring many new skills which will help them to create their final piece of artwork. This particular experience is very exciting as they will be basing the artwork around the illustrator of the Harry Potter books, Jim Kay! As part of this experience we will be visiting the studios where the films were made and will be fully absorbed in all things Harry Potter related! Throughout this experience, children will learn how to create different pencil lines to show texture and shading, they will also learn how colour creates mood and how they can create movement in their final design. These techniques will ensure their final outcome will be amazing! They will also be given the opportunity to continue to develop their sketchbook and feedback skills they started in the previous two terms. We will also be basing our English on Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and the children will have their own copy of the book they can bring home at the end of the experience.
12 Days of Christmas!
We were very lucky to enjoy the 12 Days of Christmas towards the end of term. We had great fun watching a movie, having breakfast, going on a Santa trail, a disco and a Christmas Fair. It made us feel very Christmassy!!
Throughout this Learning Experience, we will be discovering how Evolution and Inheritance work and how Charles Darwin's theory was made. We will start the experience by looking at how human evolved. We will look at the characteristics that make us the superior species! We will then look at how animals and plants have adapted to their environments. We will also be looking at how fossils and the stages of fossilisation have helped us understand adaptations. Finally, we will look at how we inherit certain characteristics from our parents through genes and DNA. We will present our final outcomes as either a power point or a documentary, showing all the knowledge and understanding we have gathered!
During this learning experience, Silver Birch will be looking at computing program, algorithms and codes. We will understand how they work and will be able to create our own giving logical reasoning as to why they do or do not work. We will be experimenting with the computer program Scratch, creating a game which we will then evaluate and make improvements on. Finally, we will use all of our knowledge and skills to create a final game that others can play!
For our next Learning Experience, Silver Birch will be finding out all about the Mayas! We will discover where they were from and what they ate (including their love for chocolate). We will also find out what great mathematicians they were and how their calendar works. As well as that, we will learn about their religion and the gods they worshipped!
We consolidated all our knowledge of the Maya civilisation to create fantastic non-chronological reports.
We discovered the Maya had complex calendar systems which allowed them to track the stars and planets. This knowledge allowed them to harvest their crops successfully. They were also able to track Venus orbiting the sun. We had a go at recreating one of their calendars called Tzolkin which consisted of 260 days!
The Maya civilisation also developed their own style of writing called Hieroglyphs. The wrote in books called Codex or Codices. We had a go at creating our own Codices.
Did you know the Maya were the first civilisation to use place holders and invented the digit zero! They were great mathematicians who devised complex systems.
We were interested to discover the Maya worshipped as many as 166 Gods! Itzamna was the most important god to them as they believed he was the creator and ruled day and night. They also believed the first human was made from maize!
We learnt about the daily life of the Maya people, including how they farmed, hunted and their social class and hierarchy. We were amazed to find out children under 5 didn't wear clothes!
We reflected on our workshop!
We spent a couple of lessons investigating the different Maya periods, this included: Pre-Classic, Classic, Post-Classic and Colonial. We also linked this to the chronology of British history that was happening at the same time. Take a look at our amazing timelines!
To understand the origins of the Maya, we looked at the world map to identify Mesoamerica and the countries that are apart of it. Once we located Mesoamerica, we will able to locate the cities of the Maya.
To start this experience, we held a workshop where we got to experience Mayan food and artefacts. We also spent the afternoon learning about the brutal game Pok-A-Tok! The losers of the game would be sacrificed to the gods!
For our first learning experience, Silver Birch Trees will be learning about light and electricity. We will be conducting experiments to find out how light travels and how objects reflect it. We will also be investigating the components of a circuit and how each element works. To conclude the experience, we will be using our knowledge and skills to create a working lighthouse!
We had great fun creating our final product of a working lighthouse using all our knowledge of electricity to create a circuit to go inside the structure.
