· The children really enjoyed getting creative in DT, designing and making their own cushions.

· The Ravens really enjoyed having Miss Sheldrick teach them during her training year and the Woodpeckers are very excited to have her as their teacher for the rest of the year.

· All the children have enjoyed getting involved in PE lessons. They are a very sporty year group and love taking part in PE lessons and are generally seen helping and supporting each other during the lessons. They all thoroughly enjoyed their football lessons and the mini tournament they had.

· The children loved collaborating with all the other year groups to produce a wonderful Christmas performance. They really enjoyed joining in all the songs and being recorded professionally. Some of them even got the chance to use the equipment and assist in the recording of our class.

What Lies Beneath Our Feet?

What we thought …

· That beneath our feet is soil and rocks.

· That beneath our feet, the earth is made up of different layers.

· That worms and insects live beneath our feet!

· That we can dig up the earth beneath our feet to find treasures!

What we wondered ….

· What an archaeologist is and what exciting discoveries do they make?

· Why is Pompeii famous and what have archaeologists discovered about life there in the past?

· How do volcanoes happen and what/where are famous volcanoes located across the world?

· How is the land beneath our feet divided up into countries and continents? How can we compare places in different countries and continents?

What we now know

· That archaeologists excavate the ground beneath our feet to find artefacts left behind by people from the past. This tells us about what life used to be like.

· Pompeii is famous because a huge volcano erupted there almost 2000 years ago, burying the people and buildings instantly, freezing it in time and preserving it perfectly. The city was only discovered 400 years ago and is still being excavated to this day! Artefacts discovered include pots, coins, food and jewellery, as well as perfectly intact houses showing how people lived.

· Volcanoes happen when pressure builds up inside the earth, causing liquid hot magma to escape from the earth’s mantle up through the earth’s crust. The magma released turns into lava when it erupts and it eventually solidifies to form a volcano which is shaped like a cone with a crater (a big hole) at the top. Famous volcanoes include Mount Fuji in Japan and Mount Vesuvius in Italy.

· There are more layers to the earth than they had realised. They found it fascinating to find out about the different layers of the earth and produced some amazing work showing the different layers. They found out about all the different minerals there were and where they came from. They were shocked at how many different minerals there were.

· The earth’s land is divided up into 7 continents and 195 countries! The earth’s continents are big pieces of land and they are called: Europe, Asia, North America, South America, Africa, Australasia and Antarctica. We compared the geography of two places in different continents/countries: Cambridge in the UK and Seattle in the USA. We learnt how they are similar/different in terms of their populations, buildings and their physical features.

· Some of the children hadn’t realised that trains travelled as far underground as they do and found it fascinating that this can happen beneath the ground we walk on.