This week, Year 2 received a very important letter from The Dog’s Trust. It was asking us to help them find out how to look after a new dog that had arrived. We needed to find out how to keep him happy and healthy.

We investigated ways that we could find information and noticed that we had to use a special type of book, non – fiction.

We then found out lots of facts about dogs and how we look after them. Today we wrote our own non- fiction text that we can sent to The Dog’s Trust to help them look after their new dog.

In Geography this term, Year 1 are learning about our local area. We have been thinking about the different things we have in the area of Nechells. We used an internet app to see a map and explore our local street view. We found where we live and some human features in our area such as the shops we go to and our school. We know that human features are built by someone. Today we were extremely lucky to have a visit from Roy Slim who used to live in Nechells many year ago. We asked him clever questions about what Nechells was like and found out lots of facts!

Our science work in year 5 has been about Life Processes and Living Things. As part of that we have been looking at plants, how they grow , what they need to grow and also parts of a flower.

In our latest lesson the children had to dissect a flower and lay all the parts out and create a labelled diagram and explain what each part was for.

Year 6 have been researching about the Victorians and how they lived.

Below is a few examples of our research into the slums.

Victorian slums.

It was very hard for the Victorians to make money when you live a hard, unsuccessful life. They survived on not much food and wore horrible clothes. If you were poor you would possibly have a bath once a month or even longer.

London slums were the worst houses because they were very small and you would have had to share a house with many other people. It was possible for you to share a place with total strangers. The Victorian slum houses were very smelly and very different to the houses we have now in the 21^st century. A Victorian house (slum) would have been all on one floor you would not have had not a lot of things in the house.

By Tiarno and Misha

Victorian Slums

A Victorian slum is like an apartment building where the poor used to live. There was only one toilet, one bathtub and a place to get water, all in the courtyard. If you couldn’t pay the rent you would get kicked out of the slum or be forced to live in the doss house. The doss house was where you would sleep in coffin like bedding or sleep hanging over a rope. There was a small shop in a slum where you could buy goods like bread, butter or fish. The people who lived in slums would make match boxes, grew cress and make wooden handles to earn money.

By Damon

Victorian slums

Slums were places where poor people went to live and work to get money for food. They were grimy, horrible buildings with lots of people living there. The “neighbours” weren’t very friendly. They would only have one or two beds, depending on how rich they were. The rooms were cramped up, with wallpaper falling of the mouldy, stained walls. The less fortunate may have had to share a room with another family. In one slum, they had one toilet so everyone had to take turns. If they were really unlucky, they had to use a bucket and brush and every time someone used it… they chucked it out the window!

By Inaiya and T