We had a wonderful day exploring St Albans Cathedral through maths and poetry trails and learned a lot about its history and how the Cathedral is used. We felt incredibly inspired by the cathedral teachers and the beautiful surroundings. We even met the Bishop! Find out more by reading our comments…….
I really enjoyed the trip to St Albans Cathedral. Whilst we were there we did two trails which were a poetry trail and a maths trail.
The maths trail was my favourite. We had to look at the maths patterns on the walls and floor. Afterwards we measured the width and height of the Cathedral. We first measured the width with a tape measure and the group that I was in measured 20 meters. The actual answer was 23.5 meters! We then measured the height using a balloon with some string tied to it. We let the balloon drift to the ceiling and I was responsible for pulling the balloon down. My friend Angelo then measured the string with a trundle wheel. Our measurement was correct this time at 20 meters.
I enjoyed the poetry trail because we learnt lots of things about what they did there. Some of these were the priest saying prayers from the Bible, the choir singing at celebrations and lots of other things. After all of that we wrote our own poem. This is the poem I wrote:
Baptism the holy water
After you’ll be Christian
Peace for God and to remember
Time for you to become a Christian
In your dreams you’ll never forget
Sleep and rest
Me and you Christian now
By Marios Charalambous
A thorough account of the day and a thoughtful poem. I’m so glad you enjoyed it and learnt so much!
On Thursday year 4 went to ST Alban’s cathedral and it was great fun. We saw lots of thing’s and we also did activities relating to maths and poetry. We also wrote a poem which I will tell you at the end.
My favourite activity was measuring how high the roof was.
Step 1 – you will need to get a balloon on a string
Step 2 – hold the string and let the balloon rise
Step 3 – be very quiet so you can hear when the balloon touches the roof
Step 4 – Pull the balloon down making sure you know where the point was on the string where the balloon hit the roof
Step 5 – we used a measuring wheel to record our results. It was 20 metres high.
We also measured the width of the Cathedral using our strides. I estimated it would be 25 and it was!
Poem.
A Time for Everything
A time to pray and a time for silence
A time for speaking
A time for sitting and a time for standing
A time for laughter and a time for sorrow
I loved are trip to St Albans cathedral. We did so many different thing including writing a poem doing maths and taking a look around the cathedral and what people do their. It was also incredible to know be were in a building 900 years old! However the cathedral had been rebuilt three times since. We listened to a poem in a bible while we were listening we had to jot down ideas for are own poem, it was really really fun. We had to think what the real meaning of the poem was it was called their is a time for everything,and I agree. After this we had lunch this was at 11:45 we had a hour to eat and play and after all the walking round I really needed it.
After we did my favourite part of the whole trip the maths. When we got told we were doing maths I was puzzled maths in a cathedral I thought but actually it was extremely fun. First we would walk around keeping our eyes on the lovely patterned floor,we had to spot lots of shapes on the floor and also about how shapes can and are symmetrical. We then had to sit on the floor where there was squares their were loads of them but only 2 designs. We were in partners one person would hold the piece of paper tightly on the floor while the other person with a crayon would draw over it the pattern came out on the other end me and Alex’s my partner were amazing. Then we were looking around again we had to spot anything to do with maths not including the floor I found Roman numerals. After all of that we went into a massive hall we had to predict the length width and height of the corridor we did the length and and width first then it was the extremely interesting part the height what we did was to put a balloon in the air connected to string and keep making the balloon go higher when it got to the top the really nice women that was showing us round held the bottom of the string and kept walking the balloon was also coming down when the balloon hit the lovely ground all we had to do was measure the string that was across the floor. We then got are lunch boxes and bags this was the end of the trip
We also had to make it really sustainable two people lunch boxes caught my eye Matthews that was made out of an old lego box that would have gone in the bin and Henrys made out of PAPER how did it not rip
By Gabriel
Before I post this, Gabriel, could you proof read it please? Think about homophones, full stops, capital letters for proper nouns and apostrophes for possession in particular!
On Thursday 9th we went to St Albans cathedral. A few minutes after we got off the coach we started to walk to the entrance, on the way me and Henry saw a graveyard.
We had 2 trails, a poetry trail and a maths trail. The first trail we did was the poetry and took place throughout the morning and was really fun! There was a lady who worked at St Albans cathedral who was giving out a clipboard with a piece of paper on it. On the piece of paper were some places in the cathedral that we had to go to, and we had to write our ideas down to help us with our poem. While we were jotting down notes the lady was telling us about the places that we were at. It was really interesting finding out about the shrine. In the dissolution of the monasteries Henry VIII side was taking all the brass which was very valuable and was taking it out of the floor in various parts of the cathedral. During our visit I found little bits of brass still in the floor, because the people who were taking the brass weren’t very careful, there are still remains of brass in the floor today.
The maths trail was also very fun. One of the things we did was look at shapes in the cathedral. We also looked at 3D shapes. We measured the width of the cathedral and then we measured how high it was, we measured the height of the cathedral with a balloon!! Before we measured the height of it, we did rubbings of patterns that were on the floor.
Here is my poem:
A time for sorrow a time for joy,
A time to sing and a time to think,
A time to learn and a time to talk,
A time to be blessed a time to die,
A time for dark and a time for light,
A time to give and a time to share.
By James R
On the 9th of march 2017 the whole of year 4 went to St Albans Cathedral. when we were there we did a math’s trail and a poetry trail.
First we did the poetry trail. In the poetry trail we had to write a poem. Before we could write our poems we had to gather some ideas. So we went to 4 different places. 1st we went to the shrine – praying I found it quite soothing. 2nd we went to the lady chapel. It was for weddings and funerals I found it safe ,memorable , happy, peaceful and sad. 3rd we went to the Alter communion the alter communion reminds we of the story of Jesus. And 4th we went to the Quire – where the choir stands and sings. This made me feel happy, joyful and calm.
My Poem – A Time For Everything
A time to sing,
A time to be quiet,
A time to be happy,
A time to be sad,
A time to work,
A time to rest,
A time to hide,
A time to show,
A time to be born,
A time to die,
A time to end,
There’s a time for everything.
After we had finished with our Poetry task, we started on our maths challenge.
In our maths challenge, we had to find out the width, length and height of the St Albans Cathedral. First we had to find out the width of the building and we did this by using a trundle wheel. I worked with Thanan and Alex S. Secondly, we had to find the length of the Cathedral. We did this using a tape measure, and layed it on the floor. After this, we had to search for shapes such as a cube, sphere, pyramid. Finally, we had to measure the height of the Cathedral. This was the most interesting bit! Mrs Chronias and Miss Martin tied a helium balloon to a long piece of string and released it, holding the end of the string until it touch the roof. They then measured the length of the string, giving us a height.
I really enjoyed our day at St Albans Cathedral, both from experiencing different parts of the building and also the practical maths.
Thank you Mrs Chronias and Miss Martin for a fab day out!
You’re welcome, James. So glad you enjoyed it!
On Thursday the 9th of March we all went to St Albans cathedral. My first impression of the cathedral was how big it was and how grand it was.
When I walked into the cathedral I felt very weird as it was so huge. I couldn’t believe how high the ceiling was and how long the walls were.
The first course we did was the poetry course. We were all trying to gather in ideas for our poems. The main thing we were focusing on was the wine and bread. We were focusing on wine and bread because the wine represented the blood of Jesus and I think the bread represented the spirit of Jesus. Then we did a poem.
My poem was:
A time for happiness and a time for sadness,
A time for loudness and a time for quietness,
A time to be good and a time to be naughty,
A time for curiosity and a time for content,
A time for singing and a time for quietness,
A time for lightness and a time for darkness,
A time for peace and a time for war,
There is always a time for everything.
Next we had the maths trail. The first thing we did was lines of symmetry. We all got a partner,a piece of paper and a crayon. We were copying the tiles on the floor of the cathedral. Then we did the lines of symmetry on our tiles.
We all had a fantastic day.
I really enjoyed our school trip to St Albans cathedral on Thursday. When we arrived we got in to our groups and thought about the first word that came to our minds when we entered the cathedral, my word was stunning. I chose the word stunning because of the stained glass windows. Every stained glass window told a tiny bit of a story. After that we did our poetry trail. On the poetry trail we went around the cathedral adding words that were relevant to the room that we were in on our idea’s sheet ready to write a poem. I wrote this poem.
A time for anything
There is a time to sing
A time to listen
A time to be happy
A time to be sad
A time to remember
A time to forget
After lunch we did the math’s trail. On the math’s trail we first spotted 3D shapes around the cathedral and then we measured the width and length of the cathedral using tape measures and a trundle wheel. We then worked with some 2D shape templates and matched them to the patterns on the floor. Following on from this we then did some crayon rubbings of the patterns on the floor.
At the end of our trip all our groups then joined together and measured the height of the cathedral. We measured the height of the cathedral using a balloon attached to some string. As the balloon went up the string unraveled until it hit the ceiling and then Marios used the trundle wheel to measure the height of the ceiling.
On Thursday the 9th we went to St Albans cathedral.
At St Albans cathedral we followed a poem trail to make up our own poem building on clues received throughout the trail. We also went around the cathedral to look for any ideas. When I looked up at how tall the building was I felt a little giddy and deeply impressed at the same time.
This was the basis for my poem which reads:
There is a time for everything:
A time to talk and a time to be silent
A time of peace and a time of war
A time for learning and a time to play
A time to enjoy and time to focus
A time for love and a time for hate
A time to like and a time to disgrace
A time to die and a time to heal.
Next we had the maths trail. First we found lines of symmetry on the ground tiles. We found a partner to work with – which was very helpful as we had additional fun. We then put a piece of paper on the tiles and used crayon to copy the pattern onto the sheet of paper. This created some additional memory of another wonderful field trip we all had.
The Cathedral
When we went into the Cathedral we got told we had two workshops, one was poetry, the other maths. Next they split us into groups, first we did the poetry workshop, we went round the whole Cathedral and saw lots amazing things. While we saw all these things we were jotting down notes. These were some of the things we did- they told us the story of how St. Albans got its name, it comes from a Roman citizen from Verulamium who was a Christian and you were not allowed to be a Christian so he got executed on the hill where the Cathedral is. We then we went to see Mary’s shrine, that is where we wrote our poem.
This is my poem
There’s a time to be happy and there’s a time to be sad
There’s a time to be quiet and there’s a time to be loud.
There’s a time to celebrate.
There’s a time to be grateful and there’s a time to be ungrateful.
There’s a time to be funny and there’s a time to be sensible.
Then it was time for a Maths workshop . The first thing we did was look at the patterns on the floor and put a piece of paper on them. We got some chalk and traced them. After that we measured the width of the Cathedral and we got 22cm. Also we measured how high the building is and compered them. We got a balloon and some string and attached them together, so we let go of the string and the balloon travelled up, then we pulled it down. So we measured the length of the string and we found our answer, which was 20m. It was all very fun!!!
On Thursday 9th of March we went to Saint Albans Cathedral.
When we got inside we had to do two activities. One was poetry and the other was maths. We did the poetry one first in our groups then our guide gave us each a clipboard, a piece of paper and a pencil. The guide took us to different places in the cathedral and in each part of the cathedral we had thirty seconds to write how the place made us feel. At the end we got to write our own poem and when we finished our poem we could read it out to the group. Then we had lunch.
After lunch we did the maths trail which was probably my favourite. In the maths trail we had to measure the width, length and height of the Cathedral. After that we went into the middle of the church were our guide gave us 2D shapes. We had to find were the shapes went on the floor patterns. Then our guide put us into partners I was with Tharnen. What we did was that we got a piece of paper and a crayon and we had to put the piece of paper above one of the tiles and draw over it. After we went in a hall were we measured the cathedrals height using a ballon.
A time for everything
A time for happiness a time for sadness
A time for giving a time for receiving
A time to be loud a time to be quiet
A time to be big a time to be small
A time to be peaceful a time to be angry
A time to be alive and a time to die
By Sebastian
My trip to St Albans was very good because I learned quite a few things: the church (some of it) is 900 years old and it was destroyed in the dissolutions of the monasteries and was rebuilt a bit after the dissolution of the monasteries and that most of the paintings were redone 50 years ago!
What I really found interesting was how we were going to measure the distance between the floor and roof and it was quite interesting. First, you have to get a long piece of string and attach it to the balloon and let the balloon touch the ceiling without adding or letting go of the string. Next, you bring the piece of string to the floor, then you measure by getting a trundle and counting how many clicks the trundle says and you have measured how tall St Albans church is!
What I also liked was the maths because we could pick from two tiles and then we could draw over it by getting a piece of paper and putting it on top of the tile and just scribble on the piece of paper. It is easy as said but we also had to draw lines of symmetry and that took me a long time because my pencil kept breaking the paper!
Here is my poem:
There is a time for darkness,
a time for light,
a time for being quiet,
a time for speaking,
a time for sleeping,
a time for being awake
but the message is just be yourself.
On Thursday we went to St Albans Cathedral. My favourite part was when we had the math tour, it was so much fun! Especially when we measured the height of the hall. What we did was , we got a helium balloon and tied it to some rope and then we let it go till it reached the roof. When it got there it made a massive bang, which was caused by the echo. We then brought the rope down and measured it with a trundle wheel including the size of the helium balloon. The height measured 20 metres which was staggering knowing that the width was 23 metres.
The English tour was all about making a poem but of course we had to know what we were writing about. So we went around the Church with a piece of paper to jot things down, it was so much fun. We learnt about Saint Luke which was actually spelt with a V instead of a U. Saint Matthew , Saint John and Saint Mark.
Here is my Poem:
A time for everything
A time for laughter
A time for sorrow
A time for talking
A time for silence
A time for war
A time for peace
A time for learning
A time for rest
This was based on a poem in the Bible
On Thursday year 4 went to Saint Albans cathedral . I was so excited as we got of the golden boy bus to the cathedral . I decided to stick with James Rowe and enjoy the trip especially as I had never been to a cathedral. As we got there me and James were discussing how big it was it was so tall I thought it was leaning towards us . As we went inside I looked up and saw the white rose and the red rose from the battle of the roses and other symbols that looked interesting . then we got in are groups and headed through the cathedral . A lady told us the story of Saint Albans and how he sacrificed his life for the Cristian beliefs . Then she took us to Jesus’s table and told us about his last meal with his friends , he told his friends ” This bread represents my body and this wine represent my blood “.After that we wrote a poem and this was mine :
A time for peace and a time for war . A time to speak and a time to listen . A time to look and a time to pray. A time discover and a time for spare. A time to recover and a time to fight. A time for darkness and a time for light.
Last Thursday we visited St Albans cathedral. The cathedral was enormous and very grand. The cathedral is a religious building so we had to be very quiet to show our respect. We had two workshops, a maths and a poetry. First, we had the poetry workshop. We walked around the church for inspiration we also went to a grand hall. There, we were told the story of St Alban. It was very interesting to find out about Alban himself. When I finished my poem we got to read it aloud:
A Time for everything
A time for love
A time for hatred
A time to teach
A time to learn
A time for peace
A time for leadership
A time for kindness
There’s a time for everything
After lunch we had our maths workshop. We entered the big hall again and sat down. Then we were given some measuring tools to measure the width of the hall. My group (me, Marios and Ben M) was given a tape measure and it was pretty strait forward. Marios would hold the tape measure at one end of the room, and I would walk to the over end of the room, while Ben M kept the tape measure on the ground. After we got our results we had another task, measuring the ceiling. We used a balloon and let it float up to the ceiling. When it reached the ceiling we pulled it down and measured the length of the string to see how high the ceiling was. After, we used an art technique to copy one of the tiles on the floor onto the paper. Then we drew on the lines of symmetry.
I really enjoyed our visit to St Albans cathedral.
On Thursday 9 March Year 4 went to visit St Albans Cathedral. We did quite a few interesting things during the day. The first activity was looking around the cathedral. We learnt how the Cathedral got its name. The Romans did not like the Christians and the fact that the Christians worshiped only one god. The Romans hunted the Christians down. Alban was a man who lived in the nearby Roman town and he gave shelter to Christian priest who was being persecuted. When the soldiers arrived, Alban swapped places with the Christian priest and was taken away. He refused to make a sacrifice to the Roman gods and he was killed by the Romans. They buried him at the top of the hill which is where they built the Cathedral. St Alban is buried inside the shrine in the Cathedral.
After lunch, we used our maths skills to work out patterns in the Cathedral. There were patterns on the floors and on the ceilings. The best activity was measuring how many strides we had to take to the other end of the Cathedral. We used measuring equipment to measure the portrait width of the Cathedral. At the very end, we measured the ceiling to the floor with a balloon and string. We found out that the height of the Cathedral was less than its length.
We also wrote poems. This is my poem:
a time to sing
a time to be silent
a time to love
a time to hate
a time for laughter
a time for sorrow
a time for war
a time for peace
a time to kill
a time for kindness
Last Thursday all of us in year 4 went on a school trip to St Albans Cathedral. When we arrived we were greeted by a nice lady who took us inside to tell us about our school trip. We were asked to do two trails. The first trail was about poetry. A group of us went to the Shrine which was a place to pray. We were asked to write what we felt about the Shrine. I wrote that it was a very quiet and calming area where you can think about things that have happened in the past. I thought of some sad things. We then went to an area called the Quire which is where the choir would sit and sing. I felt happier here.Whilst I was in the Quire area I wrote a poem called A Time for Everything.
A time to be born and a time to die,
A time to be angry and a time to be happy,
A time to get together and a time to split up,
A time to be quiet and a time to be loud,
A time to be mean and a time to be kind.
After writing my poem we went to the Altar where it reminded me of the story of how St Alban died.
After lunch the group started the maths trail. We began by measuring the width of the Cathedral using a trundle wheel. It measured 26 meters. We then measured the length which was 13 meters.
Back inside the cathedral we had some shapes such as triangles and squares which we tried to place on top of a pattern we found on the floor. Within a square we found on the floor pattern we were able to fit eight triangles.
My favourite part of the day was when all of us got together to measure the height of the cathedral. One of the guides used string tied to a helium balloon to measure the height. The guide started to unravel the string until the balloon reached the roof. Then Marios pulled the string to the ground whilst Angelo measured the distance with the trundle wheel. I thought is was really clever and great fun. I would like to use this method at home to measure the height of my house.
A great school trip .
On Thursday 9 March my year went to visit St Albans Cathedral. The school trip was to learn about the history of a man called St Alban. One day a man called Anonymous came to the city and started knocking on people’s doors. The first person to open the door told him to go away.The next person also told him that as he was a Christian he had to go away. Finally, he came to a man called Alban. Alban welcomed him in and they became friends. But then Anonymous tried to change to convert Alban to Christianity and Alban became Christian. People in the town started talking about it. So the ruler was told about Alban. He sent soldiers after Anonymous. Before the soldiers came Anonymous and Alban switched the clothes. Alban escaped with his hood up. Soldiers thought he was Anonymous, when he pulled the hood down they asked Alban if he was a Christian. And Alban said yes. When they were walking to put him in stocks he did not leave foot prints he left flowers. He asked the executioner to be allowed to get a drink. And then water came out of the ground into his mouth for him to to drink. When Alban’s head was put in the stocks the executioner picked his axe up but then he refused to kill him because he saw Alban do holy things. The ruler sent a soldier to kill Alban. The soldier chopped his head off and stabbed the executioner. People noticed that the soldier’s eyes popped out of the sockets. When people were allowed to become Christians they went to find Alban’s bones. The bones were placed in a box and a small church was built around the box. During the times of Saxons they built a much bigger church. Later on a much bigger church was built.
We also walked around and looked at the building and the grave stones. When we came in there was this feeling of a heavenly place.
Here is my poem:
The time for Everything.
There is a time to be happy
There is a time to be sad
There is a time to be loud
There is a time to be quiet
There is a time to pray
There is a time to play
There is a time to be active
There is a time to be still
There is a time to be on your phone
There is a time to run around
On Thursday we went to St.Albans Cathedral. We had two different types tour on that day. The first tour was called the Math tour and the other was called the Poem tour. On the Poem tour they told us a story of a Roman man called Alban and Christian man. The Christian man came to the Roman walls and he started teaching people about Christianity. So the Roman Empire set out soldiers to go look for the Christian man. So the Christian man came knocking at Albans door for shelter. Alban thought in his head that he shouldn’t do this but he gave him shelter. The the Roman Empire said that we are going to close the Roman walls until they find the Christian man. The Christian taught Alban about Christianity. So Alban decided to become Christian. The Cristian man decided he needed to leave the Roman walls so that he could teach other people. The Christian man managed to escape the Roman walls. Alban wanted to make sure that The Christian man escaped safely. So When the Roman guards came knocking on Alban door, Alban was holding a Cross. The guards took him to be executed. He executioner said to Alban to take off his hood and was surprised to see Alban instead of the the Christian man. The executioner told Alban if he said to the public that he prayed to the Roman Gods, he will let him live. Then Alban said that he only prayed to Jesus. Alban was then executed. Alban was the first person to die for Christianity. That’s why they call it the St. Albans Cathedral.
In the Math tour we measured how long and high is Cathedral. We measure how high it is by using Ballon filled with Helium and a piece of string. He string was tied to the ballon and was released. Once it hit the top the string which was dangling at the bottom was held. The ballon was then pulled and the string was cut from the ballon. The string was then laid on the floor and measured.
Poem
A time for noise
A time for silence
A time for war
A time for peace
A time for life
A time of death
A time for sadness
A time for happiness
A time for celebration
A time for sorrow
On Thursday we visited St Albans Cathedral on a school trip to learn about maths and poetry. We started in a room underneath the cathedral where we dropped off our bags then we went upstairs and began our poetry trail. We visited different parts of the building and generated describing words for them, we then used the words in our poem. The poem was called A Time For Everything. After this we went to have lunch and I wasn’t very well so I didn’t get to do the Maths part of the day.
A time for eating and a time for starvation
A time for life and a time for death
A time for singing and a time for silence
A time for working and a time for relaxing
A time for friendship and a time for loneliness
A time for building and a time for breaking
A time for laughing and a time for gasping.
By William
I arrived at school so excited I couldn’t wait to go on my trip. We all got onto the bus and made our way there. When we got there we walked down a path and saw gargoyles and graves, a few people looked at the graves to see how old they were. At the end of the path we saw huge doors, we stood in three lines and the teacher took a picture of us. We were then introduced to a person called Clare and see showed us where the toilets were and where we could store our lunch boxes. We got into groups and began walking around the Cathedral. First we did some literacy and learnt about the age of the building and wrote a poem.
My poem is below:
A time to go and a time to stay,
A time to grow and a time to shrink,
A time to love and a time to hate,
A time to pray and a time to sing,
A time to build and a time to break,
A time for light and a time for dawn,
And a time to sat good-bye.
Then we had lunch for 20 minutes and we started math’s. First we got into pairs and made our way to a room where we looked symmetry. There were two types of tiles, we got a crayon and some paper and did a tile rub. Then we made a way into the main hall and we did some measuring. We measured the length of the room, it measured 23.5 meters, and we then discussed how to measure the height of the room. Clare told us how we measure this. We got a balloon and tie a ball of string to it. We let it go holding the ball of string – the helium balloon rose to the top of the ceiling. Then we cut the piece of string separating this from the ball. We pulled the string and balloon back down and measured the length of the string. It measured 21.5meters. Everyone was surprised that the room was longer in length than taller in height. Once we had finished we all went to the toilet, grabbed our empty lunch bags and headed for the coach. We arrived back at school – I loved my day at St Albans.
Tiger