We had a brilliant day today at the Offa's Dyke Centre.  The children learnt about the Anglo-Saxon period, and specifically King Offa of Mercia - we now know why he built the dyke and his reasons for doing so. We also went out to see the dyke and even got to stand on the exact border between England and Wales!

The outreach officer who led the day, is also a commercial archaeologist and he talked to the children about how archaeologists piece together finds to build a picture of what life would have been like in the past.

The trip also ties in with the children's local heritage, as the school and it's surrounding areas would have been part of the Mercian kingdom.  We even discovered that the word 'Mercia' means 'border folk/people'.

 

A big thank you to Mrs Totty who gave up her time to come and talk to Oak Class about Islam and, more specifically, the five pillars. 

We have been studying the religion during our Religious Education lessons since January, so the class were very interested to hear first-hand how many Muslims practise their religion.  Mrs Totty also shared with us a very special prayer mat and a copy of the Qur'an.

The class have been using toilet roll to help us put various periods of history and historical events in chronological order.  They marked 100 years down every 10 sheets of toilet roll from 2020 AD to around 2000 BC, they then  placed the cards into the correct period of time. The aim is for the children to be able to recognise and use the terms chronological, BC and AD.  It also allows them to visualise how long ago particular events happened and how long there is between different periods of time. children described it as, 'It's like walking through time.'