King's St Alban's

30 April

Year 2: All in a Week’s Work

Year 2 had a very exciting start to their week’s work by engaging in a Great Fire of London workshop, led by The History Man, Mr Cadle.  We learnt all about the Great Fire of London last term and so the children had great fun recalling information and seeing props and artefacts based upon this.  Mr Cadle really brought the whole topic to life and the children were incredibly interested in looking at a building model of London and seeing where King Charles and Samuel Pepys, the famous diarist lived, and St Pauls Cathedral were located, plus which parts of London the fire-ravaged.  The children had a great time trying on costumes from 1666 and looking at props from those times.  The highlight from the children’s perspective was definitely getting outdoors for some outdoor learning and putting out a controlled fire from a 17th century cutout house.  They had to use equipment which would have used in those days including, leather buckets, water pumps and squirters.  The children were so excited when Mr Cadle completed a controlled explosion, to demonstrate how they blew up houses with gun powder, to break the chain of the fire.  We would like to thank Mr Cadle for giving us such an informative, interesting and exciting afternoon.

This term our topic is influential people.  We are studying different people, past and present, who have had a positive impact on society.  This week we have been focussing on the Wright brothers, Wilbur and Orville Wright, who designed the first engine-powered aircraft.  In our creative writing session this week, we practised factual writing by writing a newspaper article as if we were a reporter who witnessed the first-ever flight in December 1903, by Orville Wright at Kitty Hawk in North Carolina.  We talked about the features of a newspaper and thought of a headline that was short and snappy. The children also tried to include witness statements and interviews with The Wright brothers using speech marks.  Later in the week, in our humanities lesson, we thought about the history of flight and we used a timeline to cut, stick, date and order the first flights from a hot air balloon, helicopter, an engine-powered aircraft, a passenger aircraft and a space shuttle.  We look forward to learning about Rosa Parks next week. Well done Year 2!