Today, Year-5 have enjoyed a day with our visitor, Victoria, who has been teaching us about the Ancient Maya. The children have taken part in archaeological excavation, Maya math problems, examined Maya artefacts, and made Maya sculptures out of clay.
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 4 had a brilliant time exploring an African market, which was inspired by the one featured in the story Grace and Family. They listened to traditional music and imagined they were wandering along the bustling aisles, sampling a range of delicious foods. We’re very excited to write detailed setting descriptions using our notes.
On Friday, Year 5 had a visitor from ancient Mayan times, called Big Nose, to tell us about what life was like in those times, including: their beliefs; how they invented maths; the foods they ate from the rainforest; and lots more.
After a learning the Mayan numbers to 10 (complete with a competition of boys against girls, including a teacher round with help from good listeners), we sacrificed 5 children in different Mayan ways to please the gods. This included: decapitation, heart extraction, drowning, buried alive and shot by arrows.
Some children got to dress in Mayan clothes, and to find the most important person for a feathered headdress, we had to find out who could cross their eyes the best – since this was a sign of importance and beauty.
Next, we tried Mayan foods. However, we learned that many of the foods we eat nowadays made up a lot of the Mayan diet, such as avocados, peppers, corn (maize), beans and butternut squash. As well as their greatest export: chocolate. However, it was not chocolate we are used to – no milk. It was 85% cocoa. There were not many fans of the almost pure chocolate bar. 6 lucky (or unlucky) individuals got to try 100% pure cocoa beans – they were not fans either. The teachers also got to try some, but did not get that ‘chocolate fix’ from milk chocolate. It was described as bitter, salty and textured like nuts or sawdust.
After play and lunch, the year group was split to take part in drama sessions. They were split into a further 6 groups, then the children were given different situations to dramatise and deliver to the other groups. Each person needed to have an active role in the performance, no matter how quiet they were. We were told to be as funny and cheesy as possible to deliver the information to the rest of the groups, as we learn more when it’s fun.
To end our day, we took part in another drama session, this time including the teachers, to learn about the Mayan creation story. The teachers played the parts of the gods (Kuklukan and Hurrucan), where we played the different animals, trees and people that were created by the gods.
Year 5 were learning about Chinese culture in the past through listening to horoscopes, finding out about animals which are held sacred in China, and listening to traditional stories. They then 
wrote their own stories based upon Chinese culture.
Reading our adventure stories
Sharing our ‘Anjum’s scarf’ stories
Sharing our stories
Tips for success when reading aloud
Writing our scarf stories
A princess
A crown
Anjum’s scarf
Anjum’s scarves became…a camel
A parachute!
A begging bowl…
A king!
Indian dance
Indian dance
In Year 4 and 5, we welcomed the well-established poet and scriptwriter, Anjum Malik. Anjum has worked with our school before, at Arvon’s Lumb Bank, where she inspired a group of Year 6 children into writing some amazing poetry.
She was looking forward to working with Harton Primary again, and led workshops in Creative Writing, and Writing Monologues over the course of two days.
Year 4 started with some Indian dance, then were shown how a simple scarf could be transformed into just about anything! The scarves inspired the children to role play a scenario, then write in any genre. They really had a great time.
The Year 5 children attended a ‘read through’ of Anjum’s playscript Monologue, just like real actors do. The monologue was about a Bangladeshi family’s experience of racism in a different culture, and finding a place in that society.
Year 4 and 5 came together to perform their work – there were some very well written and original pieces. Well done everyone.
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In Literacy, Year 4 read ‘Gregory Cool’, about a young boy who found it difficult at first in adjusting to a different culture when he visited his grandparents in Tobago. The children wrote similarities and differences between British culture
and Tobago. They also wrote their own stories set in another culture – a tropical island.
