The Talkative Teacher
  • Blog
  • Contact

Ideas, Resources and General Musings

New Term, New Topic (more pics to follow)

17/1/2016

0 Comments

 
Happy New Year! Well, after an eventful Christmas and New Year, it's been full steam ahead this term. Our new topic is all about Holidays. Yes, I know that this is a common Foundation Stage and KS1 topic, but I've amped it up to KS2! There is so much learning to be done!! The children are loving this topic already. Anyway, I should start at the beginning...

Holiday Hook

To hook them into the topic, I allowed each team of 4 to come up with a 'tour group', who could be travelling together. We had pensioners, 2 couples, a single mum with 3 children, a family with 2 adults and 2 children, a swimming team on a social holiday and a group of university students. They thought of likes, dislikes, considerations (such as disabilities or allergies) and group dynamics. I then took them and redistributed them to different groups, along with a suitable budget and 2 holiday destination options. 
Opening their envelopes was the funniest experience! The 'swimming team' squealed with excitement, the 'pensioners' groaned and laughed and the single mother declared that 'they'd better have a kids club because she's stuck on her own with them all year - this is her break', meanwhile a 'teenage daughter' was sulking about not being able to charge her iPhone in a tent! Talk about getting into character!!
Picture
In Maths, we decided to try to figure out how Trip Advisor rank attractions after realising that the top attraction often had a lower rating than those further down. I took screen shots of some of the top attractions in our local area (Manchester), and we had a look at the bars and numbers to check what each represented. After a quick recap of finding percentages using a calculator, the children explored possibilities. Some tried finding the percentage of 'excellent' reviews, some wondered if it was based on the percentage at 'average' or above (thus moving themselves on to a 2-step problem, having to total the categories they were including). 
Okay, I know that this is nothing new, but we had a lot of fun measuring distances with maps, scales and pieces of string! We then extended this a bit to calculating how long a journey would take at a given speed. The maps we used were just simple Google maps of Greater Manchester, allowing us to find the distances between our school and local attractions. Later in the week, we converted these from metric to imperial, because let's be honest - who measures distances in kilometres?! 

Check back next week for details about the walking tour we are designing for our parents and the fantastic speaking and listening that has come out of it! Sorry for the short post but, as you can see, we've been very busy! More to come soon, promise! 
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Mrs P

    Hi! I'm Mrs P: passionate primary school teacher!

    Help them to know something they didn’t before, feel something they never have, do something they thought they couldn’t do or, best yet, ask a question they hadn’t thought to ask before. If you can do that for a child every day, consider it a job well done!

    By Subject

    All
    Art
    Being A Teacher
    Christmas
    Class Management
    Classroom
    Craft
    Cross Curricular
    Displays
    English
    Geography
    Greater Depth
    ICT
    Maths
    New Term
    PE / Sport
    Reading
    Religion
    Science
    Tips & Tricks
    Writing

    By Date

    October 2018
    August 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    April 2017
    October 2016
    July 2016
    April 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Blog
  • Contact