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October 2022

In Kestrels have been following on from our comparisons of Devon cities and villages last week, we have been looking at Dartmoor. The children used a key to find features such as tors, historical sites, pathways and villages on a map and also used a local information booklet to find about Dartmoor’s geography, wildlife and history.
In today’s lesson, our mission was to find out what soil is made of.  We looked at a soil sample in a test tube and made observations about what we could see. We could clearly see the stones and the organic matter. Miss Pike bought in her portable microscope, and we could see the soil magnified. We made some soil of our own, deciding on a recipe. We learnt that lots of sand would help the soil to drain well. Some of us stirred the mixture, while some left it in layers. We planted some seeds and will now wait to see how successful our soils will be.
Our diversity text this term is The Undefeated. To put this into context for the children we learnt about the story of slavery through the eyes of Harriet Tubman. They were sad that this was a true story and surprised that this happened, even though it was so long ago. Children then learnt about the British slave trade, learning new vocabulary along the way including the term enslavement. The book that lacked context and meaning at the start of the lesson had far more impact after the learning, and they listened to the powerful reading by the author Kwame Alexander.