Independence

Applique Sewing Design

As part of our textiles unit, children used SketchPad to create designs. They then used the design as a template on fabric to sew a design onto a t-shirt. Children used many independent skills during the sewing task. The activity took resilience, patience and determination as some children had never thread a needle before!

Cooking and Nutrition: Healthy Pasta and Tomato Sauce

During our 'Design' phase of our process, we decided which vegetables and herbs we wanted to include in our own pasta recipe. We decided on vegetables that would complement each other as well as those which were healthy.

We also built on our skills of using equipment in the kitchen. We independently used the hand blender to make our sauce smoother and a hob and pan to boil the pasta. Of course, we built on our chopping skills from previous years and decided which was the best method to use based on the vegetable we were chopping.

"I enjoyed selecting vegetables that I had never tasted before. They were new textures and tastes for me and it was interesting to choose these for my sauce." Harley

"It was great to be responsible for some more difficult equipment now that we are in Year 6. We had to be responsible for boiling water and using the hand blender. This gives me more confidence to use these skills at home too." Charlie

Cooking and Nutrition: Scouse Pies

After considering our final design, we chose the vegetables that we would like to be included in our pie. We independently cut our vegetables into dice so that the vegetables would cook evenly as it stewed. We also decided on the size of our dice as we knew this would affect the taste of the final product. Did we want larger pieces of carrot? Did we want to include onion, but just to flavour the gravy rather than overwhelm the overall taste? How many potatoes did we want to include? - bigger potato pieces would remain whole after being stewed; smaller pieces would stew down and make the filling thicker. The choice was ours!

"I liked choosing which vegetables I wanted to include in my Scouse as I do not like onion, but learnt about how the taste would make the gravy even better. Because of this, I made sure that the pieces of onion that I cut were really small so that it would stew down quickly." Ava

"Inspired by my nan's recipe, I wanted to keep the pieces of potato quite big so that they did not break down when the filling was cooked. I learnt that if I cut them small, they would make the filling really thick. Therefore, I cut the potato pieces quite big by using the chopping skills we had learnt." Caitlin

Fairground Rides

After creating the existing designs and learning about how the mechanical and electrical systems worked, our next step was to use our existing knowledge to design and build our own models.  We had our own choice of materials and tried to create a simple design, using what we have learnt to apply it to our own model. Finally, we presented our models to the class, explaining the mechanical elements that we had used.

"I decided to keep my design quite simple using gears. I used what I learnt from the exploded diagrams to use in my own model. I made a simple ferris wheel; however, it did not have a motor and I had to add a force to push it around. Next time, I would try to use a motor in my own creation."  Charlie

"The independent activity was really challenging because you had to use what you had remembered to create your own design. I tried to create my own version of a pirate ship using the same triangles to keep the structure strong. I had to adapt my design because I made it too big, and it became too complex." Ruby