It seems some time ago that the children excitedly arrived, greeted by the cabin crew and prepared to take off.

 

Our learning experiences, rooted in non-core curriculum are a real strength of our approach at Fishbourne, ensuring that the curriculum is wide, rich and deep while also being engaging and inspiring. As we planned this learning for our children, we knew we wanted to work hard to ensure that the core geography learning was equally as strong as the reading and writing! A brief look at the learning journals shows us that this is the case. The children have become more curious of the world around them, asking geographical enquiry questions and setting out to find the answers.

 

The quality of the writing coming out of classrooms is fabulous to see and so we have shared some examples below. Each of the children whose work has been published here have made super progress during this learning experience, through personalised steps of learning.

 

Our younger children in Year 1 and 2 have been enjoying writing to Samir and Samira who have been in daily contact with our children to tell them about where they live and what it’s like there, and asking what it’s like in England.  The children’s end goal is to write back to Samir and Samira, but one of their steps of learning has been to record everything they had found out from asking geographical enquiry questions to tell the audience what they had found out about Brazil. Sophia has produced a super piece of writing and it’s clear to see how knowledgeable she is!  

 

Meanwhile, our oldest children have been to Manila in the Philippines and have been uncovering a different side of life in the Philippines, using it to deepen their understanding of the interaction between physical and human processes. In their End Goals, the children went into role and wrote letters from children in Smokey Mountain to children in England, sharing their geographical understanding.

Dear Ethan,
My name is Jun Jun and I live at the Behala dumpsite. I can’t write so I ask Sister Olivia to write for me. People at the dump call me Rat because I live with all the rats. Others are lucky, they don’t have to live in the dump and they get a proper house. I barely ever get letters so you have been really nice to send me one. I don’t even have many friends, I think it’s because they think that I don’t deserve any friends because I am poor.

Behala is a very hard place to live. Every day we have to search through the rubbish, and diseases spread around all the time. We do not really stay clean at all because we do not have enough money for that. We don’t even go to school all the time although we get to go sometimes. Occasionally, instead of going to school we hang out on the streets and talk. I don’t do it much because I don’t have many friends and my friends go to school mostly anyway.

For me it is quite helpful living in a tropical zone because it is warm so it is easier to survive. Because I live under the ground I can hide from the rain, typhoons and tsunamis. It is indeed a huge place for tourists but we are too poor to go there. I used to live in Sampalo but I had to move here.

To be honest, I quite like Behala Dumpsite but I wish I could go to school every day.

Yours sincerely,
Jun Jun

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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