Big Idea: Stone Age to Iron Age

Whilst exploring the lives of the pre-historic, we will become aware as historians of how artefacts help us uncover mysteries of the past. Knowledge and understanding about the Stone Age transition from hunter gatherers to farmers will enable us to consider whether we are still reliant on the natural materials around us today to enrich our lives. Developments in manufacturing and processes have allowed the evolution of these materials, but how has the pre-historic era impacted our life today? Was the change from a nomadic existence to becoming settled a necessary one? As Geographers, we will consider the areas of their settlement as well as designing homes as if Dover was the area of our settlement. Using the style of cave paintings, we will consider, ‘How does Art speak to people?’, ‘Can we use Art to tell a story?’ through this we will create exhibitions which communicate our lifestyle to those in the future.

Learning Landing

Our learning landing this term consisted of DT. We needed to design a house for the Neolithic era that could shelter and keep someone safe. To begin with, we looked at a range of houses from this period to explore their shape and what they were made out of. We then were able to work as collaborative cats to design our own Neolithic house.

To prepare for our making, we had to become Stone Age people and collect natural materials. Over an afternoon, we then made our own Neolithic houses, being open-minded octopuses to overcome challenges. In the end, we were all able to create a Neolithic house, with most providing shelter and safety.

Stone Age Information Texts

All term, we have been learning about The Stone Age so part of our English learning was focussed on writing information texts. We learnt how to write in paragraphs, use a range of sentence openers and include factual information.

To be successful, we were adventurous aardvarks and collaborative cats by researching information about different aspects of The Stone Age. Afterwards, we picked our own sub-headings and used the research to plan our information text.

We then wrote our introduction and sub-headings before publishing our work, adding pictures to give extra information. Everyone was an aspirational ant throughout the whole process.

Art

Integrity class spent a day completing their art project. We annotated cave paintings and looked at what each painting represented using great inference skills to help us. We then used our researching skills to find out information about Banksy. To finish we were adventurous aardvarks and created our own pieces of graffiti style cave paintings using chalks to show the comparison of how humans once lived and how we live today.

      

    

    

Living History Workshop

We had visitors in school to help us learn more about The Stone Age to Iron Age.

To start with we learnt a story about Otzi the Ice man and then we were able to put on costumes and have face paint so we were Stone Age people for the day.

We then took part in 6 different activities, some of them involved making tools, flint knapping, pottery, chalk carving and bow drilling. We learnt lots of new skills.

“I found the tool making really fun because we had to break a stick up to create a tool”.

“The pottery was lots of fun, we got to make our own pots”.

“We made holes in stones by using a bow drill.”

We then found out about the Bronze Age and made our own pendant like Bronze Age people would have made. We had to carve patterns onto the metal and then write our names on it.

Computing

In Computing this term, we are learning about algorithms and how to create algorithms using scratch.

So far we have learnt how to change the background, character and how to make our character move forwards, backwards, up and down.

Learning lift-off

For our learning lift off this term, Integrity Class were creating stone age handprints and looking through pictures of Stone Age tools, food and jewellery.

Maths

In Maths this term we have been learning about the place value of numbers. We have used base 10 and pictorial representations to show how many hundreds, tens and ones in a number. As a class, we are being adventurous aardvarks and aspirational ants to challenge ourselves and attempt problem solving and reasoning questions. 

Yoga

This term in yoga, we learnt a new way to help us relax and then played a game where we had to be collaborative cats to get the balloon from 1 end of the line to the other and back again.

‘I love yoga, it’s lots of fun.’

‘It makes me feel calm and relaxed.’

‘I like doing all the different yoga moves, like the warrior ones.’

‘It was hard to get the balloon over our head to the next person, but it was lots of fun.’