On Friday, Year 3 enjoyed a visit to the City Centre to develop their learning in their theme 'Town Planners'. The purpose of the walk was to look at key places in our City Centre, find out what sort of people visit there and create ideas about how we can improve those areas.

Year 3 were very excited and eager to get going. We arrived at the cathedral and split into two groups. In our groups we walked around the City Centre stopping at the Cathedral, St Peter's Arcade, Town Hall, Guild Hall in Cathedral Square and Queensgate. At each stop the children had an activity to do focussing on the purpose of each location. We discussed what was good about that area and how we could improve it to attract more visitors. The children came up with some great ideas.

At the cathedral the children decided it needed a sweet stall, more flowers, it needed cleaning and some benches could be added for people to sit and relax on.

Outside the Town Hall the children thought it would be good to have music playing outside, they wanted fun fair rides, the wanted colourful floor a play park to attract more people to the area.

In Cathedral Square, we were lucky enough to see the Christmas tree and that stage being put up for the light switch on. It got the children very excited. We discussed how this was a busy area of town but some of the children did not like the water fountains and felt they should be replaced with different things for children like a skate park.

Our final stop was Queensgate and the children had lots of ideas to improve this area. They felt it needed something for children, such as a play area, gaming room or go karts. They also noticed there was not any seating for the shoppers so they wanted to add some.

We had a great time exploring the City Centre and identifying ways it could be improved. We look forward to using our ideas in our work back in the classroom.