October marked the beginning of Black History Month and everyone here at Sacriston Academy has been focussing on this topic in their lessons.
Early Years learnt all about Mary Seacole. Cruz said: "Mary helped soldiers by giving them food."
Emilia explained: "She was a nurse and gave the soldiers food and mix medicine."
Lilly added: "Mary was a good person because she helped people and gave them medicine and bandages."
The children in Early Years concluded that Mary should have been allowed to be a nurse no matter the colour of her skin.
Year 1 focussed on Katherine Johnson, a famous and inspirational American mathematician. The class talked about her early life and some of the difficulties she had to overcome along with her amazing achievements over the years. Year 1 created a poster of Katherine Johnson and wrote addition and subtraction calculations inside to link to their current maths topic.
Year 2 looked at Sam Cooke this month and learnt the lyrics to 'Wonderful World'. The group did a reading comprehension on him and Ellie thought he was important because 'he refused to sing at concerts where people were split up. He thought black people and white people should be treated the same.' Daniel said: "He was a nice singer who would cancel his concert if he thought people weren't being treated fairly."
Everyone agreed that he championed people and stood up for black rights.
In Year 3, pupils learnt all about scientist George Washington Carver, who lived in the early 20th Century. They learned how he eveloped new types of crops and suggested that farmers rotate the types of crops they grow. He also invented 300 uses for peanuts which impressed our children!
Year 4 studied the amazing life of Nelson Mandela. The class found out that he worked to try to end apartheid in South Africa, the set of rules that kept white and black people apart, but that he was imprisoned for 27 years because of this! The class then read about how he became the first black president of South Africa after his release from prison. The children thought he was a truly inspirational person.
Year 5 used Muhammad Ali as the focus of their learning. The class learnt all about his career as a boxer and winning world heavyweight championships fights. They also learnt about his refusal to fight in the Vietnam war for religious reasons and his ban from boxing as a result. Year 5 thought this was unfair because he was only standing up for what he believed.
Our eldest children in Year 6 learnt about a famous African writer from the 1700s - Olaudah Equiano. They learnt that he was enslaved and given a different name - Gustavus Vassa. The class learnt that he travelled all over the world and learnt to read and write. After working hard for Robert King, Equiano was able to pay King to free him from his life of enslavement. As a class, pupils discussed how the first-hand recounts of Olaudah Equiano were so important as there were very minimal first hand accounts of anyone else who had been enslaved, meaning that his autobiography was extremely important and special.