We have been looking at Rivers and Erosion quite a bit over the last few weeks but one of the starting points for this topic was been having an understanding about rocks, the different types of rocks and how the wear away differently. So I thought I would show what we used to revise all of that – our Rocks and Soils Topic Pack from Oaka Books.
It follows the same format as all the Oaka Books Topic Packs – a Topic Booklet, a Write Your Own Notes booklet and a learning game. And as with all the topic packs you could use this to learn about the topic or to revise about the topic. With this pack we actually used it in both ways – for my oldest it has been a revision session – a very quick read through for her and for my younger son it has been a learning pack – slower read through, sometimes going over sections a few times to make sure he understands. And for me that is one of the reasons why I keep coming back to these topic packs. You really can use them in different ways – revision, learning new facts, just selecting topics out of the packs to learn about – and I have a feeling we will in the future still find new ways to use them.
So for my daughter she actually just read through the topic booklet quickly and then “tested” herself by completing the write your own notes. She did this in two sessions and was done (And even though she worked through it really quickly it was still really worthwhile as it cemented some good facts which were important for the Erosion learning). For my son it was slower, we read, we chatted, sometimes we looked at the write your own notes, sometimes we went back and reread sections. But both ways the topic pack worked well.
For those of you who have not used Oaka Books Topic packs before they are designed in a very visual format – blocks of key information, with key points and illustrations to highlight the points.
Then the kids get to reinforce what they have learnt by completing the blocks in the Write Your Own Notes and finally you have a fun learning game (always our favourite part) which cements everything and also possibly highlights areas that the kids did not understand.
And after playing the game my daughter actually asked me to just use the question cards to test her.
Admin Bit – from time to time Oaka Books send us some resources. It is up to us to decide what we use, when we use and how we use it. We are not paid for these posts and we only continue to use the Oaka Books Resources because we really like them.
ofamily learning together 