Autumn 2
Week 4
Today we were very fortunate to have a visitor to class. Adrian Worrell came to share his historical knowledge and expertise about the plague. The children joined in the fun and I saw some excellent acting skills! Many thanks to the Friends of Pendle for assisting with the funding here.
On Wednesday mornings Mrs Kennerley teaches History in 3/4S.
The Great Plague
This half term we are going to be learning about 'The Great Plague. Plague had been around in England for centuries but in 1665 it was Stuart London that suffered. This was the worst outbreak of plague in England since the black death of 1348.
Week 1
To introduce our topic this week we focused London and what life was like there back in the 1660s. We discovered that lot of people lived and worked there and it wasn’t very clean so it was very easy to get sick. We now know that overcrowding was a huge problem and this resulted in the disease spreading very quickly. We will be discovering over the next few weeks how and why thousands of people died during the Great Plague.
This week we simulated the river Thames during this time. We added rubbish, dirt, 'urine' (apple juice) and 'excrement' (weetabix) The children were disgusted and amazed to discover people actually bathed and washed their clothes in the river. How disgusting!
We also watched an award winning video of 17th century London. It focused on the area around Pudding Lane and the bakery of Thomas Farriner, where the Great Fire of 1666 started.
Although most of the buildings are conjectural, the creators used a realistic street pattern and even included the hanging signs of genuine inns and businesses mentioned in Samuel Pepys' diary.
The children were fascinated to see what London looked like around the time of the plague!
If you can take a look, the best part starts from 0:50 in the video.
