Peterlea’s learning voyage of discovery into how places change

Peterlea Primary School, Cardiff, has been delivering the Curriculum for Wales through Learning Expeditions based around a Guided Question.  Rhianne Rees, a teacher at Peterlea Primary told us more.

Our learning expedition was undertaken by Year 3 and 4, across our 3 mixed year group classes, so almost 60 children altogether.  Inspired by a book, 'Song of the River', by Gill Lewis (ISBN-13 978-1800900615), we decided that this would be a great option to engage our children.

The geographical learning based on the journey of a river and the scientific learning of the water cycle could easily be linked, but the story of a similar aged child and the devastation that comes from communities who experience flooding would really grip them. The book references wildlife that depend on the river and looks in detail at beavers and we felt that the children would engage with learning about nature and animals.  So with this at the forefront of our thinking, we framed our Learning Expedition for the Spring Term around the Guided Question of 'How do places change?'.

When introducing our learning expedition we first wanted the children to see as many parts of a river as possible. For this reason, we began our topic by heading to our neighbouring county, the Vale of Glamorgan, taking the children to the beautiful Porthkerry Country Park. There, we explored acres of woods and meadowlands of the sheltered valley, leading to the pebble beach and spectacular cliffs. We saw the river grow and change, following the nature trails and the river itself, out to the sea. The cliffs were great to see and really helped the children understand the concept of coastal erosion when we looked more closely at this later, as part of our overall guiding question, how do places change?

We moved on to reading the book, following the story of a 9 year old girl who moves from the city to a rural location, after a tragic accident where she lost her father. The emotive story moved on to her Mum setting up a cafe and losing their home and business to a severe flood.

In the story, we meet a nature conservationist who shares their knowledge of beavers.

Our children conducted their own fact finding research on the amazing beaver and shared their learning through fact files and double page spreads. Simultaneously, they were learning about rivers, identifying geographical features, and building an understanding of river systems, and how they change over time.  Armed with our knowledge of beavers and their incredible dam building skills, we used the story as a stimulus to plan and write, in character, to the local council asking the community to consider introducing beavers to the area to help prevent future flooding.

Next, we used the text and rivers to create wonderful pieces of poetry. The children looked at lots of poetic features and tried out a variety of poems including Haikus, Kennings, Cinquains and Shape, amongst others. Finally, they chose their own to write and publish based on rivers.

At Peterlea, we are lucky to live near a local park, the Dell, which has a small open space with water that the children visit regularly. Our school grounds provided the inspiration for the final part of our literacy based tasks; to write simple instructions on how to build a home for nature. Some children opted to create bird feeders for our orchard / allotment area. Others used the hedgerows to encourage hedgehogs, and some worked on creating instructions for bug hotels for our forest school woodland area.

Our learners really got stuck into this learning expedition! Muddy wellies, wet feet, lots of laughs and great memories from Porthkerry Park! They loved learning about the beavers particularly and really enjoyed writing poetry. They learned principally about changing states, and the water cycle, using the process as a focus for producing their own stories about it.

Specific learning covered:

• Materials can exist in different states and have different properties, e.g. solids, liquids, gases.
• States of matter can change, e.g. Ice-water-steam, due to an increase or decrease in energy.
• The Earth is made up of different physical features and environments, e.g. mountains, rivers, coastal areas.
• The Earth’s landscape is constantly changing and being shaped by nature, e.g. coastal erosion, water (rivers) shaping landscapes.

Through this context, children learned:

• The properties of solids, liquids and gases.
• Physical features of Wales and one other country, explicitly mountains and coastal including rivers.
• How physical changes affect the landscape (flooding, erosion, rivers).
• Changes of state and how it relates to physical changes (volcanoes, water cycle).

By the end of our Learning Expedition, children were able to:

• Describe the physical features of landscapes and how they are similar/different in different places.
• Describe how landscapes are changing as a result of natural forces.
• Describe the different states of matter and how they change.

Throughout our lessons, whenever there was a chance to highlight careers and skills required for them, we always make the most of it. It is so important for children to be exposed to a wealth of job roles, especially ones they may not know exist. As teachers, we are always trying to broaden their knowledge in this area. For example, throughout the reading of the book, we would refer to what activities nature conservationists and park rangers may do. Roles within the community, such as councillors, were discussed. The rescue services and after care volunteer roles were considered. Who helps when disasters happen, and who is there to help when people are in trouble or sad about something. When we looked at the water cycle and rainfall, we would draw attention to who is gathering the rainfall information? Where does it come from? Who interprets it? Indeed, our final task of writing instructions was purposeful, with an end goal to produce a simple set of instructions that could be available to visitors at Natural Resources Wales sites. We talked about the people who design and produce these in real life.

When planning our learning expeditions we really thought about the four purposes, what they mean for our children, and which of those we could focus on throughout the Spring Term.

We also chose the focus AoLE of Humanities and planned to cover the following ‘What Matters Statements’:

• WM3 - Our natural world is diverse and dynamic, influenced by processes and human actions.
• WM4 - Human societies are complex and diverse, and shaped by human actions and beliefs.
• WM1 - Enquiry, exploration and investigation inspire curiosity about the world, its past, present and future.

The secondary AoLE was Science and Technology:

• WM4 - Matter and the way it behaves defines our universe and shapes our lives.
• WM1 - Being curious and searching for answers is essential to understanding and predicting phenomena.

Another connected AoLE was Expressive Arts:

• WM1 - Exploring the expressive arts is essential to developing artistic skills and knowledge and it enables learners to become curious and creative individuals.
• WM2 - Responding and reflecting, both as artist and audience, is a fundamental part of learning in the expressive arts.
• WM3 - Creating combines skills and knowledge, drawing on the senses, inspiration and imagination.

This way of linking the learning authentically to real life is invaluable. This particular theme was very factual and geographical with a good dash of science too that interested the children. The text allowed us to explore the humanitarian side and connect with the people and communities we met in the book, whilst learning about nature and river animals that the children really engaged with. Flooding is something that does affect us in this part of the world, and the children should be informed and develop an understanding around it and what can be done to minimise the chances of it happening.

We deliver our Learning Expedition through a weekly teacher led activity, three times a week. This means we can focus on small, teacher led groups exclusively. The other children who are not in the teacher led group are working independently on Missons. They need to complete a number of missions over a two week period. They are in control of the order they do them in. The children really love the independence they have and take their missions very seriously. They will apply recently taught skills to these independent tasks such as 'learn a dance based on the water cycle' (Health and Wellbeing). To ‘create a piece of art in response to music’ (Expressive Arts). To ‘use an atlas to locate information’ (Humanities). To ‘design a poster including persuasive language’ - about a Beaver,  Water vole, Curlew, or a Natterjack Toad, for example (Languages, Literacy and Communication). To ‘use grid references / coordinates to specify locations’ (Mathematics and Numeracy). To ‘use Es i... to describe where we went in Wales’ (Welsh). The extended pieces of writing (letters, poems and instructional writing) was covered during our literacy sessions.

The culmination of all of our planning and teaching resulted in the children learning to understand how our landscapes change over time, which is a really big concept!