As it is Science week and our theme is ‘Growth’, Year 5 decided to link this with the idea of human Geography and look at how Birmingham has grown and changed since the Victorian era. This will allow us to start thinking about our new Summer term Theme of ‘The Victorians’ before we break up for the Easter holidays.
We started by looking at how people lived in the city centre during the 19th century and explored life in the slums- dark, dank and unsanitary, we soon decided that this was not somewhere we would have enjoyed living. It was because of a man called Joseph Chamberlain, who was Mayor of Birmingham, that areas of the city centre changed.
Our focus was on how he cleared the slum housing to create a commercial area which we now know as Corporation Street as he felt this would best benefit the people of the town. Inspired by this change of land use, we re-designed the area around Curzon Street to meet the needs of the population in 2022.
What do you think? Would this be the best use of the waste land? We think we’ve been very innovative and really enjoyed the challenge of being a town planner!