Mrs Ryall's class
Mantle
We try to weave much of our curriculum into a Mantle story.
During the Autumn Term we worked as a team of party planners. The team were commissioned to plan a party to celebrate the fantastic work done by nurses. As part of this work, we needed to find out about Florence Nightingale and how nursing has changed over the years. We also had to produce posters and invitations to the party.
During the Spring Term we worked as a team of animal food distributors. It was a really important job, ensuring that different animal groups had the correct food. We had to make sure we knew about the different animal groups and different types of diets.
In the Summer term we are an environmental team. Our oceans habitats and beaches are under threat from plastic pollution. There is a lot of work for us to do!
Photos from when we saw the animals in school!
To end our Animal Food Deliverers mantle (Mrs Ryall), we experienced close encounters with 6 different animals. These animals were a mixture of mammals, reptiles and amphibians.
- Chinchilla
- Snake
- Frog
- Tortoise
- Bearded dragon
- Skinny pig ( A Guinea pig with a bit of hair around it's face)
A very exciting day!
'The Pond Cleaners'
Autumn 2022 with Miss Sleem - Science
Do you know the trouble with ponds? Well, sometimes they get filled up with leaves and occasionally rubbish! Who do you contact when this happens? The Pond Cleaners of course!
To begin, we used some puzzle pieces to discover a photograph of a pond. What sorts of things would you find in a pond? When we agreed, we created images of these things and placed them inside, beside, next to and outside the pond.
Once we had represented the pond, we began imagining what would be happening near to the pond. This use of drama helped us to rehearse sentences that we could then use to caption still images within our Mantle work.
What is happening near the pond?
Becoming a Team
We looked back at some reviews, but somehow they had been damaged. We recognised words, but they didn’t make sense and the sentence order was completely muddled! We worked in small teams to sort out the sentence and then, using our Maths learning we used 2D shapes (triangles) to create star ratings to match the review.
Look at our reviews and star ratings!
What equipment do we need?
We had a good idea about some of the things we needed, but to help us we used the internet to look at other businesses that offer pond cleaning and we discovered the essential uniform we would need...
Creating our equipment and uniform.
Getting our commission.
With our great reviews available for people to see, it was no surprise that we were going to get more work. We were contacted by Steve at Arrow Valley Lake who wanted a team to clear the leaves found in 'The Lake'.
We were all VERY excited because we know 'The Lake' and we love the park there!
Is this a commission we're interested in? It's a rather large space compared to the ponds we're used to!
Representing the lake
Through narration, we heard and saw the lake and how it slowly filled with leaves over time.
We noticed three types of leaves…
Science learning
Between us, we could make some observations and share our knowledge about the leaves we had seen. One of the team recognised oak leaves because Grandad had told him so, what are the other ones called? We discovered these leaves were oak, birch and willow leaves.
We also learnt that trees that lose their leaves are called deciduous trees.
A real photograph of ‘The Lake’
Replying to Steve
We emailed Steve back letting him know we would like to help and gave him a date.
Planning our route and maths problem solving.
To help us choose the easiest access route, we plotted a map including the trees surrounding the lake and their distance from the lake edge. This allowed us to use our newly learnt measuring skills in maths to help with our work.
Jobs to be done!
Together, we agreed there would be several jobs to make sure we complete the commission successfully.
1. A team collecting the leaves from the pond.
2. A team collecting photos of the work before and after.
3. A team counting the leaves that we found.
4. A team communicating with the client about what is happening.
The drama
We used the sounds below whilst we worked. As we arrived at the site, we knew where we were supposed to be, the tasks we had to do and we began working.
Busy, busy, busy!
Everyone was very busy completing tasks for the client. We were pleased with how the cleaning was going.
Tension: Something wasn't right...
We came away proud of the clean pond. We sent Steve, our client lots of photos of the clean pond, but soon after we left, we noticed a really negative review on our review page. They kept coming!
Disaster!
What is going on? We know we cleared the pond. Why is Steve and his friends leaving such awful reviews?
We decided to go back to the lake and have a look and it was full again!
The team that collected the number leaves noticed something and called the other team members over. All of the leaves we took out belong to deciduous trees! It's Autumn, so of course leaves are falling!
We contacted Steve and he told us he was very disappointed to see leaves in the lake already.
We used our map, our data and our collection of leaves to explain to Steve why this was happening and used the term 'seasonal change'.
Steve asked if the trees could be removed and we said we couldn't help with that, because we're not tree experts, but he should consider if cutting the trees down is right because one of our team saw a birds nest in one of the trees!!!
We were able to let Steve know that in the future he should look at planting evergreens as they don't lose their leaves like deciduous trees do!
Making sure our customers know what we do.
We agreed that we needed to let people know more about what we do and give them examples of the kind things we expect to find in ponds.
