Author: Calder Lodge School

As part of our Cultural Capital the class visited a Morecambe beach to explore and identify physical and human features in a real-world environment. The students were excited to get outside in a new environment as they observed and explored their surroundings.

Straight from the bus they dived straight into the mud, showing great enjoyment and fun together. 

The children quickly identified several physical features of the beach. They examined the stones scattered along the shoreline, they discovered logs that had drifted in with the tide. Some students managed to find pieces of sea glass and they observed the sea whilst noticing the mountains in the background. 

The class also explored human features—things made by people. They noticed pieces of plastic washed up on the shore and in the distance, they saw a train traveling along the coastline, recognising it as a form of transportation built by people.

Throughout the visit, students sorted their observations into physical and human features, strengthening their understanding of the difference between natural and man-made elements. The visit encouraged curiosity, environmental awareness, and hands-on learning, helping students connect classroom geography lessons to the world around them.

As part of our Cultural Capital enrichment, the children took part in a pizza-making experience that combined practical life skills with cross-curricular learning. Prior to the trip, the children planned and designed their own pizzas, carefully considering food hygiene procedures, safety rules and the importance of following instructions when cooking. They selected toppings thoughtfully, explaining their choices and labelling a picture of their finished pizza.

This learning was closely linked to English, where the children planned to write an acrostic poem using the word PIZZA. They focused on the visual appearance of a pizza and later used their senses during the tasting experience to uplevel their adjectives and descriptive language.

During the trip, children were highly engaged and confidently drew upon prior knowledge about sequencing instructions and understanding why it is important to listen carefully and follow rules in real-life cooking situations. 

They demonstrated independence, teamwork and responsibility throughout the activity.

After making and tasting their pizzas, the children will had the opportunity to evaluate their work, discussing what they liked and disliked and suggesting improvements. They reflected on how their choices might change if they were making a pizza for someone else rather than just themselves, encouraging empathy, consideration of others and critical thinking.

Overall, the experience provided a meaningful opportunity to develop practical skills, language, reflection and cultural awareness through an enjoyable and memorable hands-on activity.

We went on a school trip to Lancaster Castle to learn about the Pendle Witches. The castle
is very old and was used long ago as a place where people were kept and questioned.

During our visit, we learned about what life was like over 400 years ago and why people
were afraid of witches. We found out that some of the people accused were poor and
different, and that fear caused many unfair decisions.

We explored parts of the castle and listened carefully to stories about the past. The trip
helped us understand why it is important to be kind, fair, and not judge others.

We enjoyed our visit and learned a lot about history and how we can learn from the past.

This trip linked to the History curriculum, where we learned about significant events from the
past and how people’s lives were different from today. It helped us understand that evidence
and fairness are important when learning about history. Furthermore, it gave the children
insight into key historical people in our locality of Lancaster.

The visit also supported English, as we listened to information, asked questions, and wrote
about our experiences using clear sentences and new vocabulary. It was also linked to
PSHE, helping us think about kindness, fairness, and treating others with respect. We
learned how fear and rumours can hurt people and why it is important to make fair choices.
We concluded our trip by evaluating whether the Pendle Witches were heroes and villains,
the children loved discussing this and drawing their own conclusions.

The trip helped us learn in a real place, making history come alive and helping us remember
our learning.

As part of our Everyday Materials topic, we visited Bamber Bridge Park to explore materials in a real-life environment. The children worked in small groups to observe and identify different objects around the park, such as benches, paths and natural features. We then focused on the play equipment, where the children looked closely and decided which materials it could be made from. The children were asked questions such as Is this object made from more than one material? and How does this material feel? to encourage careful observation and discussion. They discussed their ideas, explained their reasoning and identified materials such as wood, metal, plastic, stone and fabric. The children consolidated their learning by recording their findings and once back in school, shared their observations and discussed similarities and differences between materials. This visit helped the children make meaningful links between classroom learning and the world around them, developing their scientific vocabulary, observation skills and understanding of how materials are used in everyday life.

The class spent an exciting and creative day designing and building their own rockets, inspired by the story Beegu. They were using recycled materials found in school.

At first the students designed a rocket by drawing and discussing their ideas. Next they made a start with making their own rockets using their preferred materials found in school. 

They worked collaboratively at first, building their rocket and exploring where materials should be placed and used for specific things. The main materials they used were cardboard, bottles, tubes, and foil to construct unique rockets, thinking about shape and detail. 

As they built, the children shared ideas, solved problems, and helped one another, showing great teamwork. The day ended with everyone proudly presenting their rockets and explaining how they built it and what they used.

Bleasdale Class visited the Blackpool Sea Life Centre as part of their Abyss topic. The purpose of the visit was to inspire the children to write alliteration poems linked to sea life and underwater habitats.

The children greatly enjoyed exploring the Sea Life Centre and observing the wide variety of animals. They used the information boards, along with what they saw and heard during the visit, to gather facts and descriptive vocabulary that they could use in their alliteration poems. For example, while observing the clown fish, Xander worked with Mr Blower to create the alliteration phrase “ornate orange, cool clown fish.”

Whilst listening to information about rock pools, the children learnt that starfish have no blood, bones or teeth, live in cold water and feel sticky to the touch. They also discovered that sea anemones, when viewed up close, look like gumdrops and prefer to live close to rocks.  

The children also learnt about coastal waters and how they support marine life. They found out that bays, inlets and sheltered coastal waters often provide a nursery for fish, offering a safe environment away from predators.

The pupils will be able to use the information and experiences gained from this visit when writing their alliteration poems in follow-up lessons and it was a great way to introduce the topic to them. The trip was both enjoyable and educational and provided valuable inspiration for our learning.

Today, Fairsnape took part in a practical cooking activity to support our English learning- instructional writing. To help the children understand the purpose and structure of instructional writing, we followed a recipe to make rocky road biscuits, working in two small groups.

Before starting, we looked closely at the features of a recipe together. In their groups, the children discussed what they could see and confidently identified a title, an ingredients list, and clear instructions. They were also able to draw on their previous learning about non-fiction texts, recognising that a recipe is a type of non-fiction. We compared this to other factual writing we studied last term, such as newspaper reports and biographies, which helped to deepen their understanding.

During the activity, the children worked collaboratively and took turns to read and follow the instructions carefully. We kept everything the same and followed the recipe exactly, which helped the children see the importance of clear and precise instructions. The practical nature of the task supported engagement and teamwork.

Once our rocky roads were finished, the children tasted them and shared what they liked and did not like, explaining their reasons. This discussion will feed directly into future lessons, where the children will write their own rocky road recipe, deciding which ingredients or steps they would like to change or keep the same based on their experience today.

Overall, this activity supported the children’s understanding of instructional writing while also developing real-life skills and giving them a meaningful experience they can draw on in their own writing.

To end the day, we had a sensory session and explored some messy play! The children absolutely loved their introduction to this terms topic: Muck, Mess and Mixture!

As part of our class topic ‘Paws, Claws and Whiskers’, we visited Wyresdale Dexter’s Farm, a working farm close to school. This visit gave the children the opportunity to learn about what happens on a farm each day and learn how to take care of farm animals.

During our visit, the children met a variety of animals, including cows, sheep, and pigs. They enjoyed looking closely at the animals and talking about what they could see, such as their size, colours, and markings. 

The children learned about how farmers care for their animals. They fed the pigs, watched how they ate and behaved. They also watched the farmers groom the sheep and weigh them to make sure they are healthy. Another important job that we helped the farmers do was to look at their faeces under a microscope, to look for unhealthy germs. This helped the children understand that there are lots of different components to farm animal care. 

One of the highlights of the visit was seeing the farm in action. The children helped the farmers to round up the sheep and learned about the daily tasks that need to be carried out on a working farm, such as feeding, cleaning, and checking the animals.

The visit to Wyresdale Dexter’s Farm was an exciting and memorable experience. It helped the children learn more about animals and farm life, while developing care, respect, and curiosity about living things and the people who look after them.

Nicky Nook visited Ribby Hall Zoo. This visit linked to our Paws, Claws and Whiskers topic, with a primary focus of our English text- which was writing a set of instructions for a Zookeeper. 

Throughout the trip, the pupils visited different animal exhibitions; this included crocodiles, a bat cave, leaf cutter ants, reindeers, an otter exhibit and the classes favourite animal from the zoo- the capybara. 

Back in school the children used their experiences at the Zoo to write about who they saw in the animal enclosures using the information they had learned about the animals. This information was used to help them write a set of instructions for a Zookeeper. 

The class really enjoyed the trip and were able to recap all of the events that happened using photos taken. This trip highlighted offered hands on learning, an important element of our topic work. The children wrote wonderful instructions for a zookeeper looking after a capybara.

The children had an exciting adventure hiking up Nicky Nook, spotting trees, streams, mud, fences and amazing views along the way. As we walked, the class began making up their own alliteration phrases, inspired by everything they could see, hear and squelch through!

The walk certainly wasn’t short of drama. Archie and Ranell managed to get themselves properly stuck in the mud—not just their feet, but their shoes and boots actually disappeared into it! There was a lot of laughing, a bit of slipping, and eventually some very muddy rescuing. Kai showed incredible bravery too. Even though he’s not a fan of heights, he pushed himself to keep going and ended up walking most of the way up the hill with a big grin on his face. Meanwhile, Frankie and Ollie seemed to think the hill was a racetrack. They zoomed ahead, dragging poor Mr Meadows into a full workout as they powered up the steepest parts of the route!

During our rest stop, the children played around with more alliteration, testing out tongue-twisting phrases and trying to outdo one another with the silliest (and most impressive) ideas. The next day in class, we looked back at the photos from our adventure and used them to help us create a whole-class alliteration poem. It set the perfect tone for diving into our next topic on poetry.

Here’s the class poem we created together:

Brilliant Bleasdale bowed to the beauty,
Watching great, green, growing grass,
Amazed by the humongous, healthy hills.