Our school is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people. We expect all staff, visitors, and volunteers to share this commitment.

If you have concerns regarding the safeguarding or welfare of any of our pupils, please contact Miss R Brown (Designated Safeguarding Lead), or Mrs S Nelson (Designated Safeguarding Lead), Mrs T Bolton (Designated Safeguarding Lead) or Miss Blackburn (Designated Safeguarding Lead)

St Peter's participates in Operation Encompass. Following the report of an incident of domestic abuse, school will be advised that the child has been involved. Please see school website for further details.

The Safeguarding and Child Protection policy can be found here. SAFEGUARDING POLICY

I have read the
Child Protection policy
I do not wish to read the policy

Home Page

Anglo-Saxons

UKS2 began our new History topic with a picture source. We had no idea what our new period of study was, so we had to use clues in the picture to make inferences. We used our enquiry skills to make some super hypotheses. Joe thought the cliffs in the background could be the White Cliffs of Dover and he thought this made sense as the people attacking could have come from across the Channel! A few of us thought the invaders could be Vikings. We had lots of further questions about the picture, such as 'Why do the shields they are carrying have different patterns on them?'.

Today we used our enquiry skills to solve the mystery of the real reasons why Anglo-Saxons invaded Britain. We had to use clues and evidence to work out reasons that would be likely or unlikely. We discovered that there were several reasons why they invaded and we then decided if these reasons were push or pull factors.

For instance, a pull factor was that they were interested in the metals available in Britain. A push factor was the flooding in their homelands that had ruined their crops.

We then watched and evaluated two different video clips about why they invaded to decide which video clip was more reliable and historically accurate.

We used the poem 'The Ruin' to enquire about what the Anglo-Saxons arrived to find in Britain. We considered how our previous work on the Romans linked to this period of History and also reflected on how reliable the source was.

Were the Anglo-Saxon times really 'Dark ages?'

We first of all thought about why the Anglo-Saxon period is referred to as the 'dark ages'. We considered lots of different reasons about what this could mean. Some of our super suggestions included:

the brutal punishments that were used for people who broke the law
the fact that children were expected to work from a young age
that things that the Romans had built fell to ruin
all the fighting that was taking place between different groups and tribes.

We learned that it is often called the 'dark age' because there is very limited evidence of what went on during that time, so we are 'in the dark'.

We then worked in small groups to place some different and contrasting interpretations of this period of History onto a 'darkness' spectrum. It helped us to consider whether it was fair to call this period of History the 'dark age'.

Diving deeper and debating a historical question. Is it fair to call the Anglo-Saxon times the 'Dark Ages'?

UKS2 have been investigating how the Anglo-Saxons lived in small village, farming communities and what materials they were adept at using to build homes, barns and communal buildings. We've learnt about the extensive use of wattle and daub.