Hello Fir Class!

We hope you are all keeping safe and well. Thank you so much to those who have emailed us updates and pictures of your home learning. We love to hear from you. It has been great to you throwing yourselves into our Tudor topic and creating some fabulous pieces of work. We have been checking your Accelerated Readers and it was lovely to see that some of you have been continuing to complete your quizzes at home, as well as using your Times Tables Rock Stars accounts to work on your times tables. If you have forgotten or lost any login details, please contact us on the class email and we can give you them again. The home learning for this week will be put on the class pages at various points throughout today, so please do check at the end of the day or Friday morning to make sure you have seen everything. 

Take care! 

Miss Miller and Mrs Causer

Maths

This week we will be continuing to follow the White Rose Home Learning for Maths. Search 'White Rose Home Learning Year 2' or whatever year you decided to follow last week and follow the lessons for Week Two.There are activity sheets, but you can also copy these questions down onto some paper to complete, or generate some similar questions of your own.

Something else...

Unfortunately, we haven't been getting the best of the weather this week so far. However, if you do catch a dry moment, this outside Maths activity may appeal to some of you. With chalks, draw a coordinates grid. The size of the grid is up to you. Once you grid is drawn, place objects in various places on the grid and find the coordinates for them. If you do not have chalks or a suitable surface, you could try making one on the grass with sticks, string or whatever you think could work.

Oracy 

Find a picture that you find very thought-provoking, or look at the picture above. Spend ten minutes exploring the picture with someone else at home. Ask questions and think about the story the picture is telling. If you would like, you could draw your own picture to discuss and spend time talking about it with a family member. 

Music – Outdoor learning

Go outside into your garden (or do this during a daily walk) and listen to all the sounds. Try to identify twenty sounds you can hear and make a list of them. You’ll be surprised at how many things you can hear. 

English

Last week you wrote a biography about someone close to you. I hope the person enjoyed reading about themselves. This week, I would like you to write your autobiography – a description of your own life. This should be a straightforward task as no one knows you better than you! It will be a written task that you can do independently. Please try to spend at least three hours on it. One hour for planning and then two hours to write it up (or type) in best. Of course, it doesn’t all need to be done in one session.

Please remember:  

It needs to be written in the first person, for example, I was born on 24^th December 2010 at Rochford Hospital.

It needs to be in the past tense.

There should be facts about your life. Don’t make things up.

Include dates to show when something happened. You don’t need to be specific - the month or year will be fine.

It should be in chronological order – the date that things happened in your life. Start from when you were born and then work upwards to now.

Write in paragraphs.

As well as writing about key moments in your life, try to pick three times that were particularly memorable and write a paragraph about each of these. It could be a special birthday, a holiday, the birth or death of someone special, moving home, starting school, making a friend, or anything that was of importance to you.

We look forward to reading these as they will be about our favourite people – You!  

Guided Reading 

This week, I would like you to make a 'Which story character are you?' quiz using the characters from a favourite story of yours. Look at the example above as an idea. You will need to consider carefully the specific traits of each character to make your quiz as accurate as possible. As an additional extra, you may want to write a small description of each character at the end (see example above) which explains why the person taking the quiz got their result.

Topic 

L.O: To investigate crime and punishment throughout the Tudor period.

Please read the information below (or alternatively, watch the attached slide show with the same information and some additional pictures) and complete one of the activities. The Tudor punishments were pretty harsh, and at times disgusting. It should definitely make you feel a little better about the age that we live in!

What happens today if somebody breaks the law? In Tudor times, there was no police force. The king or queen would appoint noblemen to be Justices of the Peace, who were responsible for making sure that the law was kept in their part of the country.

Life was very hard for the poor during Tudor times. If you didn’t have a job, or land to grow crops, you had no way of getting money for food except to beg or steal from others. By law, only disabled people were allowed to beg. Some people made themselves look sick or disabled so that they could beg. If they got caught pretending, they could be sentenced to death by hanging.

There were lots of thieves and pickpockets in Tudor times, especially in London. At this time, people kept their money in a drawstring purse tied to a belt. Thieves called ‘cutpurses’ would cut the string of the purse so that it would fall into their hands. If you were caught stealing, one of your hands could be cut off. You would also be branded with the letter ‘T’ on your forehead. Branding is when a hot iron is pushed on the skin to burn and mark it.

People would also be punished if they had sinned. Any actions that were considered impure or against society’s moral code were punished. Women could be put into a scold’s bridle for gossiping or speaking too freely. The bridle was like a cage that was put over their heads, with a bit to go in between the teeth. This made speaking impossible and was very uncomfortable. Husbands were allowed to punish their wives like this if they told their husbands off too much. The husband could lead his wife around the streets with a rope attached to the bridle to humiliate her.

Another punishment for women only was the ducking stool. Women suspected of being witches were put in the stool and dunked in water. If they sank to the bottom and drowned they were considered innocent. If they floated to the top they were accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake. People could also be burned alive for treason. Treason meant going against your king/queen and country. If you believed something different to the king or queen or tried to harm them or their servants, you were convicted of treason.

Another main form of execution was beheading. This was usually reserved for nobles or members of the royal family who had committed treason. Beheading was quicker than hanging or being burned at the stake. The lucky ones were killed with a sword, rather than an axe. Two of King Henry VIII’s wives were beheaded for treason. Sometimes the heads were put onto spikes and placed in public places to warn people not to commit crimes.

Lots of punishments happened publicly in order to prevent other people from committing similar crimes. One common punishment was the stocks, or pillory. These were wooden contraptions with holes to lock the victim’s neck and wrists in. Once put inside, people passing could throw rubbish and rotten food at them.

There were many other gruesome forms of punishment during the Tudor times. Like today, the punishment you received depended on the severity of the crime. Heresy (going against God) was usually punishable by death. The country’s religious stance changed a number of times during the Tudor period, which meant that a great many people were charged and killed for heresy.

Most crimes committed were due to poverty; a lot of people would starve to death if they did not take food illegally. Poaching (hunting on someone else’s land) was punished by death if you were caught at night, but you were usually given a lesser punishment if it happened in daylight. How do you think people might have felt when they got caught?

How fair do you think the punishments were in Tudor Britain? Why?

Activities

1. Read the scenarios below and sketch one. Write what you think the punishment would have been for this crime.

2. Read the scenarios below and decide what you think the punishment would have been for the crime. As an additional, you could find out what the punishment would be for that crime today.

3. Write a paragraph with your views on crime and punishment in the Tudor age. Was it necessary to be so harsh? Which punishments do you feel are the most/least fair and why?

Scenario One

Will had no food to eat and no one to help him. He decided that the only thing he could do was steal money from a passer-by, to buy some bread. He went to the busy market and reached out to cut the string that held a man's purse. As he did so, the man turned around and saw him!

Scenario Two 

Mary had always been a gossip. She loved talking to people who came to her market stall, where she sold veg from her garden. One day her husband overheard her talking to her friend about some trouble he had got into. He was furious.

Scenario Three

Percy loved gambling, but wasn't very good at it. He owed money to a man. The man got angrier and angrier at waiting, but Percy had no money to pay him back. Knowing he'd be sent to prison, he decided to use a poisonous plant to kill the man. Carefully, he crushed the plant into the man's cup when he thought no-one was looking. But the maid saw him!

Scenario Four 

Margaret had always been clever and she loved reading. Lots of new ideas about religion were reaching England from Germany and other countries. She knew that these books were forbidden, as they went against the Catholic church, but she wanted to read them. She thought the new ideas about having the Bible in English instead of Latin were very sensible and what God would want.