Rockpool Raiders

Rockpool Raiders

Rockpool Raiders

Year 2 are looking for our help! They are setting up a new area on our school website focusing on protecting our wonderful coastline. Our first task is to head to Swansea Bay to look for interesting and unusual objects. It is our job to take a peek into the cool water to learn about the weird and wonderful animals and plants in their microhabitats. We worked hard to think all about what we already know about our topic. We looked at the PL and linked some of the strands to our topic. We then worked together and came up with 4 questions we would like to find out:

1. What is a squid?

2. How many arms does an octopus have?

3. What sea creatures will we see at Swansea Beach?

4. How are rock pools formed?

We shared our great ideas with our fish and chip partners during our pupil voice session. We thought of different things we would like to learn in the different areas of learning. We can't wait to write a postcard in the literacy area telling our family all about our trip. We are looking forward to learning our home address too!

What we would like to find out

One of our questions we wanted to find out this term was, how are rockpools formed? We watched the show, Time for School where a class visited a beach and saw lot's of rockpools. We decided that we wanted to create our own rockpools.

Creating our own rockpools

Before our trip to Swansea Beach we used Google Maps to find Wales, Swansea and Llangyfelach. We used Google Street view to find LPS, Swansea Beach and Mumbles. We then took a trip to the Liberty Stadium.

Google maps

Year 2 are starting a new section on their class page with a feature about beach littering. It's our job to team with The Secret Beach Bar & Kitchen to see how we can help inform visitors about protecting our beautiful beach. We worked together to think about how we could persuade Swansea residents to look after our beaches in Swansea. We discussed what persuasion is and used the skeleton to plan what information we needed to share. We decided it would be a great idea to create a poster persuading Swansea residents. We are looking forward to putting them up outside The Secret Beach Bar & Kitchen when we visit Swansea Beach.

Our posters

We had a fantastic trip to Swansea Bay this week where used our senses to spot, sniff and seek out interesting and unusual objects. We set off with our buckets and spades and raided some rockpools! We measured sections of the beach to investigate the sea life using meter rulers. We found crabs, sea snails and lot's of seaweed in the rock pools. During our visit, we also created beautiful sand sculptures. We worked in teams to collect sea weed and different shells to add to our sand sculptures. Before we left, we put up our posters in The Secret Beach Bar & Kitchen. They are displayed on the cabin to inform visitors and residents about protecting our beautiful beach. What a great day of learning and fun we had!

Raiding Rock pools!

Displaying our posters in The Secret Beach Bar

Collecting shells and seaweed for our sand sculptures

Creating beautful sand sculptures

Enjoying an ice cream!

We spotted some crabs!

What we found at Swansea beach: Our data

During our beach visit, we worked hard to measure sections of the beach and investigate sea life within the area.This week we presented our findings in a tally chart. We then worked hard to put our data into a bar graph using JIT but before this we made a bar graph together!

We met with Year 2 to show them what we have learnt about so far. They were very impressed. They have now set us a new challenge! They would like us to find out more about the types of litter that is being left on our coastlines and who maybe causing the problem. Also, they'd like us to create a short advert for their website focusing on protecting Swansea's coastline. We are going to report back to them in a few weeks with our wonderful work!

We have been working hard to write a postcard to our families telling them all about our beach visit. We enjoyed learning our home address.

Our postcards

We had a great trip to Oxwich Beach this week where we set off with our buckets and spades and raided some rock pools! We found crabs and lot's of seaweed in the rock pools. Some of us were brave enough to hold the crabs too! During our visit, we also created beautiful sand sculptures. We worked in teams to collect sea weed and different shells to add to our sand sculptures. Before we left, we had a yummy ice cream in the sun. What a great day of learning and fun we had!