Our History unit for the Autumn term is ‘My Local Area’.  We began with a discussion about chronology, whereby the children ordered events from furthest back in time (the birth of our namesake Christopher Pickering) to the most recent (them starting year 1).

We fully embraced our topic during our ‘Wow’ Day which was themed ‘the swinging sixties’. The children pulled out all the stops with their outfits – they looked amazing! (Thank you parents for providing them).We started our day by exploring artefacts from the 1960’s. The children loved guessing what each object could have been used. They almost couldn’t believe it when we told them that there were only 3 channels on the TV and there was no internet! We had asked the children to bring in photographs of their grandparents from the 60’s and got a great selection which we loved looking at together. The children thought some of the cars, clothing and hairstyles were very funny!  We watched a very interesting clip Re:Livingwhich showed how our city has changed, not only since the 1960’s but throughout recorded history. The children were particularly surprised that the The Humber Bridge hadn’t always been there. The day ended with a 60’s disco complete with dance tutorials for us to learn the correct moves.

As part of this unit, we studied photographs of Hessle Square during the 1960’s and present day. The children worked in groups to sort the photographs into ‘then and now’. They than looked closely to see if they could identify any similarities or differences. Some of the main things they noticed were that the church looked exactly the same and that there were many more cars parked in The Square.