Penguins and Punctuation

Year One

This week in Literacy we have moved onto our non-fiction unit.  In keeping with our Polar Regions theme, we have been exploring non-chronological reports about penguins. First we learned about the different features of a non-chronological report:

• Title 
• Introduction
• Subheadings 
• Final point
• Technical language 

 On Wednesday a penguin expert came to share her knowledge about penguins:

We worked as a class to generate questions to ask her. We discovered that when we asked a question beginning with who, what, when, where, why or how we got a much richer answer.

 1M

After her visit, we felt like penguin experts too. We decided to work in pairs to interview each other about our emperor penguin knowledge:

Children in 1D interviewing each other

Year Two

In History we have been learning to sequence the events of The Great Fire Of London.

Sophia-Mai

We also attended a grammar show...

"We had to find the capital letters in the piece of writing" Ashwin 2D

"Captain Grammaticus was helping us to find adjectives." Ervin 2D

“Captain Grammaticus taught us how to use exclamation marks correctly.” Oli 2F

“It’s helped me to up-level my wiritng.” Phoebe 2F

“I really enjoyed seeing  Captain Grammaticus win the trophy for writer of the year.” Lilly 2F

Thank you for reading our blog, please leave a comment!

Arctic Adventures and Magical Tours

Year One

This week Year One adapted the story of Where’s Home Little Pip to include a new character... the polar bear Large Larry!

On Monday we used similes, alliteration and onomatopoeic words to describe him.

Iria 1M

On Tuesday we created a new story plan including Large Larry:

Claudia 1A

On Wednesday and Thursday we used our plans to rewrite the story. We edited our work in green pencil:

Swayde 1D

Year 2

This week Year Two have also been busy writing.

In Geography we have been writing letters to our link school in America to find out about their school and how they learn. We looked at features of a letter to help us introduce ourselves to our new pen pals.

Sarah 2D

We also wrote diary entries about  a statue that comes alive. The statue takes some children on a magical tour around London…

Iman 2S

Poppies and Pip

Year 1
This week we have moved onto Narrative. We read Where Is Home Little Pip? by Karma Wilson and Jane Chapman. It depicts a story of a little penguin who's curiosity gets the better of her and she ends up wandering off from her home. 
We discussed what we liked and disliked about the narrative. 
1D enjoyed listening to the onomatopoeic words like Whoosh! Wheeee! and Whisssh!
Listen to some children explain their favorite parts of the story:

Two children in 1D explain why they enjoyed the story

On Tuesday we mapped out the story onto a story map. We used ambitious vocabulary to describe what was happening in the problem, resolution and ending.

Joanna 1M

Year 2
We have also moved onto narrative this week and our focus text is Katie In London by James Mayhew. In 2S we have sequenced pictures and sentences to highlight the main parts of a narrative.

Naseem 

Nisa

In 2D we have been exploring Remembrance Day by designing our own poppies.

 We were inspired by John McCrae's poem Flanders Field and decided to create an action for each line of the poem to help us to remember what the words mean.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

2F have compared houses from the past and present in their theme this week. Tegan noted some of the features from a house from 1666. Tegan identified the features of the house  by using:

• Adjectives
• Connectives to link ideas

Thank you for taking the time to look at our learning. Please comment below and tell us what we did well and what we could improve!

WIZZ POP BANG!

Year 1

This term our theme has changed to the Polar Regions. We have therefore infused our theme into the poems that we have looked at this week. We looked at a poem about Emperor Penguins and created actions to accompany it. 
Here is a small section of our wonderful acting:

1A

Later on in the week we used ambitious vocabulary to describe objects that you might find in The Arctic. Each class worked hard to incorporate their word of the week into their poetic verses.

Hannah 1M 
(word of the week: glimmering)

Year 2
We have also started our term off with a poetic bang.  In 2S we were so inspired by bonfire night that we generated adjectives and descriptive phrases towards a class poem.

 In 2D we have been writing calligram poems in the shape of fireworks. Below Toby has used the word Bang! to create his poem.

2F worked in small groups to reassemble lines of a poem in a way they thought read well. The objective of the lesson was to realise that poetry may or may not have a specific structure or order. 2F then highlighted the poetic devices they recognised in the poem as a class. 

 Maten: “The word Boom is using onomatopoeia, that means its making the sound of the word when you say it,”.

If you celebrated bonfire night we hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. Thank you for looking at our blog. See you next week!