6Aspen  Learning Update

Central idea: Exploration leads to discoveries, opportunities and new understandings.

To round off our learning focused on our central idea, we have been looking into the consequences of exploration. To begin with a negative, the Transatlantic slave trade resulted from the expansion of empires (the British and other) and saw the enslavement of over 12 million Africans; Africa as a continent became severely weakened and, even today, some parts are still struggling to recover from the aftershocks of the slave trade. However, there are evidently more positives. For one, goods were discovered that developed trade: sugar, cotton, tea, spices (plus many more) are all found in Britain today due to exploration. Further, exploration enabled travel between nations (such as with the arrival of people aboard the Empire Windrush) - this also saw the embedding of cultures in new societies and all that brang, such as new music and foods (which today we have delved into by creating our own rap music and making Jamaican patties!)

We have also focused on Charles Darwin and discovered that his theory of evolution resulted from his exploration of the world: we've applied our art skills to try to replicate his drawings which he completed on his journey.

We continue to focus on the rapidly approaching SATs in other areas, which has seen us explore poetry comprehension questions in reading, and fractions, decimals and percentages in maths.