Welly Walk
Y1 PK went on a Welly Walk to Crown Street Park. We followed directions – North, South, East, West and spotted what we could see. We also looked for signs of Autumn and that Autumn is changing into Winter.
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We are delighted to announce that our geography curriculum was awarded the Silver Primary Geography Quality Mark. Here are some of the key comments from the assessors:
‘quality learning is supported through providing pupils with appropriate knowledge and evidence.’
‘The rational for teaching Geography is clear – taking into account the school’s local context and cohort.’
‘Effective monitoring helps to drive improvement’
‘Professional development of staff is clearly supported’

At Smithdown Primary School we believe that Geography enables children to make sense of the complex and dynamically changing world that they live in. Our aim is for children to develop a natural curiosity about their immediate surroundings and the wider world, becoming more aware of people, places and environments. Children will be confident using their taught geographical skills to collect and communicate information, including drawing and interpreting maps. They will be taught through engaging, fun Geography lessons and given the opportunity for meaningful learning opportunities and field work.
In Key Stage 1 children will develop their knowledge about the United Kingdom and their own locality. They’ll learn how to use maps, atlases and globes as well as learn simple compass directions. The children will also study seasonal and daily weather patterns in the United Kingdom and look at the hot and cold areas of the world in relation to the equator and the North and South Poles.
In Key Stage 2 the children will look to extend their knowledge to beyond their local area and will study Europe as well as North and South America. They will begin to look at similarities and differences of human geography such as types of settlement and land use. They will also study physical geography elements such as climate zones, rivers, mountains, volcanoes and earthquakes. Children will continue to use maps, atlases and globes and will use the 8 points of the compass in their work. They will start to consider the use of four and six figure grid references and ordinance survey maps.
Progression will be assessed through evaluation of your child’s written work and consideration of their responses and contributions to discussions.
National Curriculum for Geography
Y1 PK went on a Welly Walk to Crown Street Park. We followed directions – North, South, East, West and spotted what we could see. We also looked for signs of Autumn and that Autumn is changing into Winter.
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What a lovely piece of work explaining why the oceans are vital to life.
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We have been finding out about ways in which everyone can reduce their carbon footprint by sometimes, small simple actions which can help our planet.
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We made our own messy maps of our tour bus route. We even made our own key to help you to read our maps. Two little superstars went off and made their own maps too.
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Yesterday morning, we went for a story, map activity and craft activity at the Palm house. In the afternoon, we followed our map and and completed some fieldwork around Sefton Park. We spotted many human and physical features of the park and added how we felt in each place on our map.
Today we had a look at our local park on digimaps to find its features. We then planned out a walk that we’re going to complete.

We loved the open top bus tour of Liverpool today as part of our Geography topic. We recognised lots of local landmarks and loved listening to our amazing tour guide too.
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This afternoon in Geography we looked at lots of different landmarks. We decided if we had ever visited any of them before, decided which were in Liverpool and found their location on a map. We can’t wait to see them on the tour bus.
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WOW! Just look at these posters informing the reader about the Giant Panda !
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After learning about the WWF status of certain animals, whether they are vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered, we chose an animal to present in poster form including the threats it is facing.
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What a busy afternoon in Year 2. We named the UK countries, capital cities and surrounding waters!! Busy busy!
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Year 3 had a lovely experience this morning designing cakes based on their local area. Lots of great ideas and presenting skills being used.
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We had a fabulous day at the beach! We loved exploring, playing, and learning together.

A wonderful last lesson writing up our non-chronological reports on the Amazon.

Year 4KM had a gorgeous day at the beach exploring. We carried out some fieldwork while using four-figure grid references.

Today, we learned about the four layers of the Amazon Rainforest: the emergent layer, the canopy, the understory and the forest floor. These children worked very hard and produced wonderful work. Well done!
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This young boy worked very hard in geography today. In fact, he works very hard in every lesson. What a role model!
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Today, we learnt that biomes are places with similar climates, landscapes, animals and plants. These children created biomes representing deserts, rainforests and savannas.
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In groups we created different biomes of our worlds. We thought about, climate zones, temperatures, vegetation and animals that would live in our different biomes.
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Today we looked on digimaps for the first time to find out where the Amazon is and found out some key facts about it. We looked at population, climate, biomes and much more. Amazing work year 5.

This morning year 3 have been working hard to collect information for our topic on statistics in maths. We looked out of the windows onto our very busy community to see how many different coloured cars we could see. We then collected the data into a tally chart to turn into pictograms.

We have had a lovely time in Forest School club with some of our Reception children and parents and families. We have used natural materials to make journey sticks, played listening games and created dens. Tomorrow-Thursday 26th June is our last session where we will be having a campfire. All welcome and hope to see lots of you tomorrow from 3.30-4pm. Many thanks.

We looked at why our world has different climates and we also explored digimaps to find different temperatures across earth.
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Today is ‘Rainforest Day’. We are taking part of a zoom by Chester Zoo where we can learn all about the different layers of the rainforest and how animals we have recently visited at Chester Zoo are adapted for the forest and where they would live in the rainforest. We have also learnt about how to help from England to make sure the rainforest is not further destroyed. 
Year 5 loved their workshop for 150 years and learning about the history of our local area. 
Using an OS Map and key we explored the area around Mount Snowdon in Geography.
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We have just started working on our Geography project, planning a route around Liverpool to take in all the famous tourist sites. We also used Google Maps to help plan our routes, directions and visualise the landmarks.
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We absolutely loved going to Chester Zoo to learn about the animals and the trees. All of the children behaved exceptionally and loved the trip.

We had a fantastic day exploring Chester Zoo. The children loved looking at the variety of animals. We saw chimpanzees getting fed, lions having a nap, penguins splashing water and even explored the bat cave. The children had smiles on their faces all day! 🦁🐒🐧🦇
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We have loved exploring the atlas to find continents and oceans.
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We have enjoyed making our balloon globes. We know the names of the continents and oceans.
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We have been learning about the difference between mountains and hills. We went outside to draw a diagram showing what we know.
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Today we had a visit from Chester Zoo. We looked at animals and plants in our school grounds. 
We absolutely loved going to Martin Mere for our immersive Viking experience. We took part in weaving, foraging, thatching and defending the village.

We had a very exciting start to our week with our first Chester Zoo Workshop on UK Wildlife. We used the iPads to find some species in our playground. The workshop got us excited for our upcoming trip to the zoo on Thursday. 🐒🐼🐯🦁🦋🐍
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Our first task today was to name and locate human and physical landmarks within the United Kingdom. Following this, we used the OS National Grid to identify which maps would needed if we were traveling to visit each location.
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Today we celebrated Earth Day and we made kites today from recycled materials. We loved flying them outside.
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As part of Earth Day, we also started finding out about the carbon emissions from countries and compared to how that stand against the populations.
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Today we celebrated Earth Day in Reception by using sun paper to make natural pictures. We also talked about ways to save and conserve
energy and used a parachute to use the power of the wind to have lots of fun outdoors.
Today we learnt about renewable resources and what we’re hoping for, for the future. We made websites to promote our ideas especially since it’s our future! 
We learnt about the various renewable energy sources and produced leaflets about solar panels for Earth Day.
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This morning we have been learning about renewable and non-renewable energy, including the pros and cons about different types of each.
We then watched a live lesson from BBC Teach about the Water 💦 Cycle.
We have had a lovely day at Martin Mere today.
we helped Ava find out which way she had to migrate, went on a treasure hunt, explored the wetlands and enjoyed the play area too!
Year 3 had a great afternoon making their own recycled paper and adding their own designs to this.

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We were very lucky last week to have some visitors in our class talking to us about keeping our environment healthy and how to look after plants. We all planted our very own sunflower seeds to take home. 🌻
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Today we learnt about the global supply chain and the different stages our products take to get to us (the customer). We debated which part of the supply chain was the most important and how fair the pay was. Our class debate was very passionate! 
We had an amazing afternoon in our lion dancing workshop. Happy Lunar New Year!

This week in science we have been looking at night and day. We have been learning about the rotation of Earth and how this creates daylight and nighttime.

For our PSHE lesson we are celebrating differences. In previous weeks we have spoken about racism, bullying and rumours and now we are researching a range of countries and what their culture looks like.
Some amazing work of Mount Etna in Year 4 today. So many facts and wonderful diagrams – well done!
After learning about how important the oceans are, we produced our own presentations to show what we know.
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Today, we had a special assembly followed by a workshop on renewable energy sources. Year 6 knew lots of information about this as we have covered aspects within our Geography topic.
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Yesterday we had a great time at the International Slavery Museum. We had a workshop in the ‘legacies of the transatlantic slave trade’ and then had time to explore the museum with our task sheets.

Year 3 had a great workshop this afternoon on how to save energy and how to be NRGenius’s. They had to create a powerful image representing why we use fossil fuels. We learnt all about renewable energy and how these are better for our environment. We ended the session by making a pledge to try our best to save energy. 💡⚡️

Superstar 🌟sisters! Both have done work at home based on their current topics 👏. Well done guys.
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We are finding so much to learn about during this unit in Geography. After finding out about climate change and the causes and effects, we are now making footprints explaining what can be done to reduce our carbon footprints.
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After learning about renewable energy sources, we have just begun to produce our own persuasive / information leaflets about solar power.
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We are simply blown away by the writing we have recently produced. Our Year 6 classes are so invested in world issues – saving habitats and animals in particular. Have a read of some of the letters we wrote to the Rwandan Government, asking them to help protect the magnificent mountain gorillas 🦍
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In Geography, we have been finding out about renewable energy sources: why they are needed alongwith the advantages and disadvantages of each.
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We simply had to share a few more pieces of work as we think they are truly fantastic! Detailed information which is extremely well presented. Great work Year 6!
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In Year 6 today, we combined our learning from Geography and English by using our computer skills to present the information we have discovered into Google Sites to create our own web pages.
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Today we used Google Earth to locate our homes. We used our postcode and explored our local area. We also tested our UK knowledge on our new Velcro maps!
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Today we had lots of fun locating the countries and capital cities of the UK. We then worked in teams to create our own maps labelling the surrounding waters.
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We used an atlas today to label the countries of the UK and the Capital Cities too.
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As part of our Geography topic we are comparing Kenyan villages and cities with Liverpool. We are making pic collages in computing to depict life in each area. On Thursday we made our Village posters of Maasai. Keep your eyes peeled for more next week as begin to compare and contrast in more detail,
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We made our own maps of Lila’s village and used compass point directions to direct a friend around the map.
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I’m sure many of us thought we would never witness a volcanic eruption!!! Today we did. The children in year 3 have been learning about volcanoes. We created our own, painted these and even made them erupt! We a had so much fun doing this experiment!!!

We had our second group to make our traditional Italian bolognese. They had a great time preparing the ingredient and seasoning it to perfection! Thanks to our amazing head chef once again – Monica.
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This week year 5 have compared Liverpool to the city of Manaus in Brazil and plotted data and different style graphs.
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We had an amazing afternoon erupting our volcanoes! We even had a very dangerous and violent composite volcano with thick magma which increased the pressure when erupting.
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Our first group created their very own authentic traditional bolognese sauce! We have linked our DT unit with our Geography topic of Italy. Super behaviour and sensible cooks.
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We have created our volcanoes and painted them. They look amazing! We are going to erupt them this week and see what happens when an active volcano blows. Watch this space…
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We created posters on Word.
We shared our favourite animals, changed the font, colour, size and style and even added images too,
Amazing work Year 2
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Here is a FABULOUS finished skyline picture to accompany our Geography work on our ‘Walking Tours Around Liverpool.’ Amazing work from this young artist.
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We have started our watercolour skylines to link with our Walking Tour of Liverpool which we wrote in Geography.
not finished yet, but they’re looking good already.
In Geography, we have been designing our very own islands. When completed, they will show OS symbols and we will locate places using 6 figure grid references.
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In Reception we enjoyed reusing our milk cartons to make musical shakers using natural objects outdoors.
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After locating places using 4 digit grid references, we progressed to 6 digit references today.
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How AMAZING is this piece of work informing us about the consequences of palm oil! ? So informative and so incredibly well presented. #smithdowngeog #smithdownwriters
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Learning about endangered animals in #smithdowngeog what threats each are facing and what needs to be done to help.
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Year 2 had such a good time on the tour bus looking for local landmarks and your behaviour was exceptional too #smithdowngeog
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Today we explored our local area using Google maps. We used our postcode to find our own homes and spotted familiar places around school too. #smithdowngeog
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.We then moved onto learning about the surrounding waters of the UK. We completed a jigsaw of the UK and used a map to help us to label the water around us. #smithdowngeog
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In Geography this afternoon we used an atlas to help us name the countries of the UK and the capital cities. We worked so well with a partner #smithdowngeog
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We walked around our local area today and took pictures of different, important places of interest #smithdowngeog
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We enjoyed using Google Earth ? to explore the school and the local area from an aerial view #smithdowngeog
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This week we enjoyed looking at where we live. We painted and made models of our homes.#smithdowneyfs #smithdowngeog @SmithdownPr
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