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Heritage Week

For one week in October 2002 the whole of the Junior school was involved in a Heritage Week. This involved linking curricular areas to our school site and providing the children with a range of challenging activities.
As many of the activities involved going out of doors, we watched the skies with bated breath each morning, and managed to dodge the intermittent (but heavy) downpours!

We devoted each day to a specific curricular area -
Monday was Earth Science Day,
Tuesday was History Day,
Wednesday was Drama Day,
Thursday was Art Day
Friday was display day - and celebration!

Teachers had been split into teams to plan activities for the upper and lower school and the teams were led by the subject managers.

The lower school spent Monday identifying, comparing and measuring the circumference of some of the many trees on our site. They were given chalk, string and tape measures.
The children then took their information back to class and created a visual graph using the string . This was then turned into a block graph and questions posed and answered.

The upper school went on a mirror walk, which was huge fun. The children walked around the grounds with a mirror held under their chin, and then looked down into the mirror as they walked. They saw the site from a really different perspective!
The children in years 5 and 6 also had to identify parts of the school grounds from obscure photos, taken at different angles using the school's digital camera.
This provoked much discussion and team- work as they tried to locate sites!
It was quite a challenge for the teachers too!

On Tuesday, the children became historians. Pennington Junior had just celebrated its 150 th anniversary and so the activities were linked to investigations and comparisons of life "then and now" for school children.
The lower school researched the clothes school children would have worn to the Victorian school and compared them to their uniform today. They then made mannequins using man- made fabrics for modern uniforms and cottons for the Victorian clothes. Most children decided that they were far more comfortable today!

Have a look at the timetables we used during Heritage weekr

 

Earth Science day

Upper School Activities

Mirror walk - Each child has own mirror and holds it just below the level of their eyes. As they walk around the grounds (carefully because they're not really looking where they're going) they look in the mirror to see what is above them eg. trees, sky, edge of buildings etc... They can stop occasionally to record what they see in any way they which.

Get to know a tree: Children work in pairs and take it in turns to blindfold each other. They must 'get to know a tree' by cuddling it and feeling its characteristics. When the blindfold is removed they must identify which of the trees they 'got to know'. Can they sketch any of the trees' characteristics by memorising the feel?

Lower school activities

Perfume and leaf: Each child collects a leaf and obsevers it very closely. They sketch it and give it a name! Explain to them that you are going to collect in everyone's leaf while they make their perfume and they will have to identify their 'pet' leaf at the end of the session. The brighter ones should realise they need to find a leaf with a featre that enables them to identify if easily. You will need something to keep the leaves in while they make perfume. For the perfume each child needs a plastic cup and some lighly coloured water - perhaps with a tiny drop of ink in. They must find their own cocktail stick (twig) then collect objects to put into their perfume - it's quite difficult because it usually ends up smelling 'earthy'.

How old is the tree? - T o measure the diameter or girth of a tree you need to make a mark on the tree 1.5m above the ground. In pairs the children measure the diameter by placing a piece of string round the tree at the 1.5m mark. The exact diameter can be found by measuring the length of the piece of string. You could so some data handling by teaching the children how to find the average of the diameters recorded or by graphing the results and comparing accuracy.

 

Arts Day

Upper school

Lower School

Activity - As a class children find as many greens or browns as possible and attach them to a large colour palette with sticky tape.

Individually children try to find as many different colours in the environment as possible.