History and Geography Intrigues

The Year 7 and 8 children kicked off the second half of this term studying World War I. Both classes have explored the various long term and short term causes that spurred 20th century imperial powers into the Great War.

This week, the classes have broken into four teams to research the long-term reasons for the outbreak of WWI. They have been tasked to create informational posters that display their understanding of the M.A.I.N. causes (Militarism, Alliances, Imperialism and Nationalism).

At the end of the week, each group will test their mettle and public speaking skills by giving a presentation on their findings to the rest of their class.They have been taught to make note cards, and given pointers on how to present material to audiences, so we are looking forward to watching them all succeed!

In Geography we have been looking at coasts. We started during Science week by doing some research on mangroves, a key feature of the Kenya coast, and the children spent time formulating their own research questions such as ‘how much water pressure can mangroves withstand’ and ‘what would happen to coasts if all mangroves disappeared tomorrow? Formulating these more complex research questions helped them improve their research skills beyond the introductory facts and into higher order thinking about mangroves and their role in the world.

We have now moved onto different aspects of coastal erosion. The children have been working on their diagram sketching, a key geographical skill, and then in this week's lesson they had a chance to build their diagram out of lego, helping to cement their learning in the long term memory by moving from 2D to 3D representation.