Hippos invade Colchester Castle

Hippo Class had a wonderful trip to Colchester Castle this week. We started off by looking at some of the artefacts in the Museum. Although some were replicas, we were able to understand the importance of these and thought about what they could tell us about the past. There were loads of primary sources too: coins, pots and busts to name a few.

We had a great time dressing up in a roundhouse with our Celtic tunics and lifting Roman shields.

Before lunch, we were set the task of making a Roman villa and a Celtic roundhouse! This was harder than it looked. We knew the roundhouse was made from wattle and daub, but we were a bit shaky on our attempt at weaving. Our Roman villa was also quite a task with one group even putting the roof on back to front! We worked hard in our teams though and developed our cooperative learning goals: encouraging others, active listening and sharing ideas.

In the afternoon, we were lucky enough to go underneath the castle! We found out that the site used to support a Roman temple. We were given a talk all about the Iceni tribe and the class contributed so many answers. We had clearly been listing in our history lessons.

We are going to use our experience and knowledge to recount our adventure in English. We better get busy!