The Marvellous Maya!

17th May 2022S Lovatt

We were lucky in Year 5 to have a drama workshop all about the Maya, which is our current History topic. We started with some true or false questions, then created freeze frames of different parts of Maya life.

Here we are acting out Pok-A-Tok (a Maya ball game where the players could not hit the ball with their hands, and the objective was to get the ball through a stone hoop at the end of the playing field.)

The Maya built many temples and painted them red, although we can’t see the red colour any more.

The Maya had a hierarchy in their society: slaves were at the bottom, followed by farmers, warriors, astronomers, priests and finally the king (known as the ajaw).

To finish off our workshop, we acted out the Maya creation story.

The two creator gods were able to think of anything they wanted, and it would appear. So they thought up trees and mountains. Then they realised they needed something that would praise them, so they thought of animals.

However, they realised the animals couldn’t speak to praise them, so they made people out of clay. But the clay people just crumbled to the ground.

The gods then decided they needed the people to be stronger and harder, so they made men from wood.

These men could not speak to praise the gods, so they destroyed them. Finally they made men from corn paste. These men could speak and praise the gods, but they could see too much so the gods removed some of their vision. They didn’t want the humans to be as powerful as them.

We had so much fun and tried so hard with our acting!

 

 

 

Year 3 Beamish Trip!

3rd May 2022Miss A Samuels

Year 3 had so much fun at Beamish! We enjoyed visiting the new 1950’s Front Street where we explored Norman Cornish’s house. Inside of Norman Cornish’s house, we did some observational sketching of what we could see. We also explored the history of the 1900’s village and pit village- some of us even got the chance to go down the coalmine and experience how it would have been for children to work in the cold, dark and damp conditions. To finish the day, we visited the Victorian school and discussed the differences in school life compared to ours today. We even had a try at using the metal hoops and sticks in the school playground- it was super tricky!

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Hadrian’s Wall 1900th Anniversary Festival

8th April 2022L Moore

This year Hadrian’s Wall is celebrating its 1900th anniversary. Years 1 to 6 took part in online workshops delivered by Tyne and Wear Museums as part of their ‘Virtual Hadrian’s Wall Day’.

We are working on a very exciting project in school. We have all been learning about Hadrian’s Wall and every child has made their own ‘fact brick’. We look forward to sharing the finished project with you soon!

Here are some pictures of our bricks. Can you guess what we are building?

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That History Bloke visited Year 2

11th March 2022H Langley

We had a fantastic time when Richard, That History Bloke came to visit to help us learn all about George Stephenson. We took part in a True or False game and compared photos to help find out about George growing up. Then, we looked at his inventions, including the Geordie Lamp and The Rocket locomotive. We even made our own candles that miners used to use and created clay models of The Rocket.

Our Special Visitor!

9th March 2022apatterson

Today we jumped back into the medieval times! We learnt all about Knights and even tried on some of their special armour. Reception explored the people who lived in the castle and had lots of fun making their own gingerbread with pitta breads, honey and ginger.

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Podcasts

1st March 2022R Errington

In computing this year, we explored different podcasts and even made our own! Y4E had learned loads of interesting facts about the Anglo-Saxons in history so they decided to write and record podcasts based around this theme. We hope you enjoy them!

Vicious Vikings!

15th February 2022R Errington

This half term, Year 4 have been learning all about the Vikings. We explored different sources to find out if Vikings were really as awful as some people perceive them. We loved our visit from Tanya, who told us all about the lives of people living during the Viking period. We also did a lot of work comparing Vikings and Anglo-Saxons.

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The Discovery Museum

14th February 2022J Twigge

This half term we have been learning about the toys Victorian children would play with, the materials they were made from.  We compared these with our favourite toys and looked at the materials they are made from.

As part of our topic we visited the Discovery Museum in Newcastle, we were very excited!

Once we arrived we had a lesson with Amy. She had lots of old toys hidden and we guessed what we though they were… a train, a porcelain doll, tea set and a dog-bear (was it a dog or a bear, we weren’t sure either!)

Then we had time to explore the museum and lunch!

We had a fantastic time!

 

Norman Cornish Artwork

11th February 2022Miss A Samuels

This week, we had a special visitor from Beamish who came into Year 3 to tell us all about the artist Norman Cornish. Norman Cornish was a miner from Spennymoor as well as an artist. We focused on Normal Cornish because Beamish are building a new 1950’s town and Norman’s studio will be part of that. This year will mark the hundredth anniversary of Norman’s birth. In the session, we looked closely at his artwork and then had our own turn at sketching and shading observational drawings. We learnt many new artistic skills such as cross hatching to help add more textures to our drawings. At the end of the session, we looked and handled many artefacts from Beamish such as the miners lamps. We thoroughly enjoyed the session and are looking forward to our upcoming to trip to Beamish where we will get the chance to visit the pit village, 1950 Front Street and carry out some sketching on locations similar to those in Norman Cornish’s sketches.

Roman Workshop

21st January 2022C Whitehead

We were thrilled to have ‘That History Bloke’ visit us to help us learn more about the Romans. Richard taught us what life would be like in the Roman period and in the Roman Army. We had to march like Roman soldiers and follow the instructions in Latin!

We looked handled some artefacts from those times and made deductions about what we thought they could have been used for! We learnt lots of new facts about the Romans.

Our final task was to write on name in Latin using ink. It was trickier than using our pencils but we all did amazing!