WC 6.1.25
We began our mantle session by watching as Miss Lettice drew a door. On it she wrote “office of Gregg Smart”. We began discussing what an office is and came to the conclusion that an office is where somebody works. Lots of the children had visited Mr Kieran’s office before and knew there were things like a desk, a computer, books and folders. We decided to build the office to help us with the next part of our story.
We looked back at the door and peered through the keyhole. We saw a man sat at the desk, typing quickly. We listened carefully and heard “Gosh. I need to get this leaflet out quickly, the people of Devon must know what is happening to the dairy farms… and print”. We paused and discussed who this man could be. He’s spoken about farms, is he a farmer? No, he’s in an office. He must be someone else. Then the children remembered the name on the front of the door, and decided that this man must be Gregg Smart. We saw as he got up and left the office and quickly snuck in to get whatever it was he had printed. It was a leaflet with “help! Dying Devon dairy farm!”. This didn’t make any sense, so we quickly went and worked together to unscramble the message…
HELP! Devon’s dairy farms are dying!
We discussed what this could possibly mean and came to the conclusion that if something dies it is gone forever. We decided that this is a very important message.
We knew that this was a very important message, but there were a few words we didn’t understand. We started by looking at the word “dairy”.
We spread images of dairy products in the centre of the circle and discussed what we could see. We were able to name the foods such as “ice cream, cheese, milk, yoghurt and butter” and spoke about the fact that lots of us had tried these before.
When then looked at milk and agreed that milk comes from freesian cows. We also discussed how there are other types of animals that make milk, but the most popular are cows. We looked at all of the dairy products and spoke about how they all have milk from a cow in them. The products that are made from cows milk are known as “dairy products”.
To improve our understanding, we used drama to visit a local supermarket. We acted as shoppers, gathering our foods when all of a sudden we overheard a conversation…
”Oh! The doctor has told me I cannot eat any more dairy foods, but I just do not know which foods are made from dairy and which foods are not!”.
We paused our shopping and looked around the supermarket, realising there was no resources to help this person. We decided we could help by creating posters. We went away and sorted a variety of foods into dairy and not dairy, thinking carefully about which are made from cows milk and which are not. We knew it was important to get this right, as people who can’t eat dairy could get poorly tummies if they eat it!
Once finished, we hung our posters around the supermarket and waited patiently to see if the customer noticed, when we heard “this is fantastic! Now I know what I can and cannot eat. Now let’s check. I can’t have yoghurt but I can have cornflakes, brilliant!”.
As we left the supermarket, we saw the leaflet again. We noticed an email address on the bottom saying
“contact us”…
We weren’t quite sure what “Devon” was. Some children thought it was a food, a game or a toy. We decided to have a look. Our first clue was a map of England, with a part highlighted in red. The children decided that Devon must be a place. Some of the children explained that they had visited Devon before, and knew it was by the seaside.
So why is Devon important here? Miss Lettice explained that Devon often has lots of fields, green grass and rain which is good for cows. Cows are herbivores, meaning they eat plants. The children understood this, and some even said that somewhere like Redditch might not be the best place for a dairy farm as there are too many buildings.
We spoke about the fact that a dairy farm is special type of farm that milks cows and uses their milk to make foods such as cheese, yoghurt and ice cream. There are lots of these farms in Devon. The children were keen to understand how the milk gets from the cow to the shops.
We began by watching a video, and noticed there were 5 main steps in the production of milk.
1. Look after and feed the cows.
2. Milk the cows
3. The milk gets collected.
4. The milk gets processed and bottled up.
5. The milk gets sent to shops and bought by customers.
The children used drama to represent each step of the process. They knew they had to take this seriously, as if it went wrong, the milk might not be safe to drink. They were experts! They then created a timeline of the process by ordering photographs and wrote a small bit of information about each step.
Now we had learnt about and understood the parts mentioned in the leaflet, we decided it was time to contact the email address at the bottom. We discussed that because we knew a little bit, we might be able to help with the dying dairy farms. We agreed to email, but realised we had nothing to email off. The children decided to make laptops to use.
We stepped out of the story and began creating laptops. We drew portraits of ourselves using mirrors as our profile pictures and wrote the first initial of our name and our last name as our usernames. We then were sure to add a keyboard to type with.
We then stepped back into our story and used our laptops to send the email. We decided to first introduce ourselves and explain we had seen the leaflet and knew a bit about dairy farms, before saying we could help. We sent the email and waited for a reply…
We checked our laptops and saw we had a reply. It was signed from Gregg Smart. We recognised the name, and remembered that we thought he was the man sat in the office. He had invited us to visit him at 2pm in his office.
Miss Lettice went into role as Gregg. Gregg was at his desk. We made sure to knock the door before we went in. He was very happy to see us! Gregg explained that he was very stressed and busy, and the dairy farms are going wrong. He told us how he works for the council in Devon who are in charge of the town. His special job was to be in charge of the farms. He explained that there used to be a team called “the farming futures” that helped him, but they left and now he was all alone. The children were keen and told Gregg that they could form his team and help! Gregg was so pleased and gave them all a team badge to stick on the back of their laptops.
He told them that this is a very important role, we must find out why and stop Devon’s dairy farms from dying!
He handed us an envelope with our first jobs in and told us to come back when we had completed them…
Back at HQ, the team eagerly opened up the envelope. Out fell some pictures and a table with the words human and physical. The team knew exactly what these words meant and explained that a human feature in geography is something that had been built by people, whilst a physical feature is something that happens naturally on the earth.
We found the job list inside and saw that Gregg wanted us to sort the featured of the farm into human and physical features.
We worked as a whole team to sort, understanding that a fence is human because it was built, whilst a field is physical as it has always been there and is naturally made by the earth.
The team then moved on to their next task, finding some photographs of what they believed to be a farm. However, they discussed that these images looked different. We discussed that these pictures were called “Ariel views” images, and are taken from above, as if a bird was looking down on the world underneath them. Gregg wanted us to label each feature on the farm and decide whether it was a human or a physical feature. The team worked in small groups and were able to accurately indemnify and label many features.
The final task Gregg had given us we to use the knowledge we had just recapped to draw our own maps. We spoke about how the maps must be drawn from an Ariel view, meaning looking down and understood that this meant buildings may be represented by rectangles and squares and wouldn’t necessarily look like a building. We got to work straight away, making sure to label each element and add whether it was a human or physical feature.
We then thought carefully about the colours we would see in an Ariel image and selected the appropriate ones to make it look more realistic.
We had one more task to complete before we could return to Gregg.
On their way back to the council offices, the team could hear shouting. They sounded unhappy. As they walked closer, they heard the words "down with dairy!" being chanted. We paused the story and thought about what this could be. We could hear that the people sounded unhappy. We discovered that these people were protesting and learnt that this is where people show their unhappiness by chanting and holding signs. We looked back at the crowd and noticed that although they were chanting, they did not have any signs. We wondered what these signs might look like...
We went into role as protesters. We were so angry about dairy farms. We had signs to make to prepare for our protest. We worked together to make banners and signs...
Then, we protested. We stood proud and chanted our message.
When we arrived at Greggs office, he was relieved to see us. We asked him why these people were so upset.
We stepped into the past (a few weeks prior) and watched the story unfold...
A lady called Jayne was walked her dog through the fields of Quickes Dairy Farm. Suddenly her dog began to pull her and bark. She stumbled upon a large animal. Its eyes were closed and it was very still.
A dead cow...
Gregg explained that after this cow was found, Quicke's dairy farm had really been struggling. He asked if we would go out and check on them. We agreed we would help!
Before we travelled to Quickes, Gregg suggested we find out a little bit about their history and what they are known for. He handed us some news articles to read and we took them back to Redditch.
When we arrived, we noticed that there were no headings or pictures! We worked hard to unjumble the headings, match the captions and add the pictures.
We then used our history knowledge to order the newspapers in decades, so we could have a clear timeline of their most significant events.
Before we could set off to Quickes, we had to plan our route. We looked at where we were (Redditch) and how far we would have to travel to reach Quickes in Devon. We discovered it was over 2 hours!
We then used google maps to look at how the geographical features changed as we left Redditch and got closer to Devon. We then worked in teams, creating maps and adding physical and human features.
Finally, before we could set off, we needed to pack our expert kits. Out of role, we had a think about all of the different items a team of farm experts would need on a dairy farm. We came up with:
- Shovels
- Gloves
- Medicines
- Magnifying glasses
- Buckets
- Injections
- Binoculars.
Out of the story, we created these items using knowledge from our playful making art scheme. We then added these into our bags. We were ready to go!
Before we could arrive at the farm, the children were keen to represent what we might find there. We discussed the elements we would see and the ways we could represent these. The children worked hard creating different human and physical features of the farm. We even created our very own cow, named Stargaze. Once the farm was made, we were able to continue our story...
The team arrived at a quiet, abandoned farm. They knew they were looking for a lady named Mary Quicke.
We paused the story and discussed who this lady might be, coming to the conclusion she must be the farmer. We decided to represent her, using the "role on the wall" convention.
We drew around each other in groups and then filled in our own Marys.
The team continued to wander around the farm, until they came across a path. They stumbled along it and ended up at the door of a farm house. They knocked...
"GO AWAY! LEAVE ME ALONE!" a loud voice shouted from inside. Who could this be? Might this be Mary?
We knew that getting Mary out was going to be hard work. We used drama in pairs, one in role as Mary, and tried to convince her to come outside and speak to us. After a short while she did.
We spoke with Mary and discovered she was feeling so upset. Not only had she lost her cow, but since, people had stopped visiting her farm and buying her products. She was loosing money day by day.
We promised to come up with a solution to help her, but we were not sure quite what...
We decided that a sure way to get people back onto the farm was to host an open day! We began by asking Mary for a list of local farmers and their produce so that we could contact them. By doing this, we noticed that farms were responsible for lots of good things such as:
We sent the emails to other farms. Whilst we awaited their reply, we decided to create the open day posters. We advertised all sorts of fun, cow feeding, face painting, fresh produce and even tractor rides!
After getting the heads up from all of the other farms, we could go ahead and set up the open day. We decided to first represent all of the different produce that would be sold. We did this by drawing and colouring in a variety of different produce, being sure to understand exactly what it was we needed to create. We then made cardboard stands for the products to stand up. Once this was complete we had our Open day. It was a great success!
We went into role as vendors and visitors. It was going well, until...
The open day was in full swing. Everybody was busy, buying, playing and eating. We watched as a shiny black car drew up outside of the farm. Out walked a man in a suit. He was very tall. He strolled into the farm and demanded to speak to Mary. He introduced himself as Geoff and explained that he was an inspector. He believed Mary could not look after her cows properly. She was so upset. We needed to find a way to help her.
We decided to create some guidance, thinking of the 4 main things Cows need to thrive.