Instruction Texts and Forest Layers

Year One

In Year One, the children have been exploring the features of instruction texts. They created actions to help them remember each of the features.

Title

Introduction

What you need

Method

Top Tip

Year Two

As part of their Rainforest theme, Year Two have written poems inspired by the rainforest.

Success Criteria

I can see beautiful blossoms.
I can see spiky thorns.
I can see a tree as big as a plane.
I can see brown bark on the tree.
I can hear birds singing.
I can feel melting branches.
I can smell fire.
Someone is trying to burn the rainforest down.
Preston 2F

The forest floor is very quiet.
A long poison snake slithers in the leaves
A colourful monkey spying on the snake’s delicious food.
Alfie 2F

Meanwhile, in geography, Year Two have been getting creative outdoors by using natural resources to produce a representation of the layers in the rainforest. They had to use their reasoning skills to explain to their peers why they chose a certain leaf or stick for their picture.

“I chose this leaf for the understorey because it is big enough to catch water and sunlight from the canopy and emergent layer.”
 Jack

“I found a furry feather. I am going to use it to represent the birds in the rainforest.”
Massimo

“I need something for the tree trunk otherwise the leaves have nothing to grow off of.”
Krish

“I used scrunched up dead leaves for moss because hardly any light gets to the forest floor. That means the plants can’t grow that big.”
Alfie

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Experiements and Adventures

Year 1

In preparation for writing our narrative The Magic Bed we looked at different locations. We chose one that we wanted our main character to go to in the build up of our story and described it. 

"In New York city you can hear cars beeping their horns." 


"You can smell burgers with onions and tomatoes. There is a hot dog stand with delicious hotdogs." 


"The screeching seagulls are swooping across the city."

-Hannah 1D

We then mapped out the 5 main parts onto a story mountain.

Luca 1A

Georgina 1A

Year 2

2F have began to plan and write their own rainforest  inspired narratives this week. Here is the class working in groups to mind map ideas for a new character.

Our science topic is 'Plants'. 2S have planted a sunflower seed and are ensuring it has all the conditions it needs to grow. They are record their findings in a Sunflower diary.

They have also carried out a experiment- 5 seeds have had particular condition withdrawn and observing what happens over the next couple of weeks.
Seed 1- planted in sand
Seed 2- no sunlight
Seed 3- planted in damp paper
Seed 4- no water
Seed 5- in an empty pot

Alexis

Nisa

2D went outside to build animal shelters as part of their future lab. Once they had returned from their adventure they wrote some instructions.

Please leave us a comment so you know your thoughts on our work.

Reading and writing out and about

Year 1
It is week 1 of our narrative unit and we have been reading The Magic Bed by John Burningham. It's about a little boy called Georgie who needs a new bed and the one he finds can take him on magical adventures.
We created our own story mountains using rope then ordering pictures from the story onto it. We had to decide which picture depicted the opening, build up, problem, resolution and ending.

Children in 1A

Children in 1M

The classes have really enjoyed the story. Here are some comments about the book by 1D.

"She didn't like the bed because it is old and it looks scruffy." Julia


"I would call it 'Georgie's amazing adventure' because he had a really amazing adventure" Frazer


"The bed is an antique, that means it's extremely old" Marie-Ann


"If I had a magic bed I would go to Australia because it is hot there and I could go to the beach." Jessica

Below is a picture of children in 1M mapping out the 5 main parts of the narrative onto a story mountain.


Year 2

This week 2F have been using the outdoor learning areas for literacy and drama lessons. After reading the book The Greedy Rainbow by Susan Chandler and Sanja Rescek they were able to retell the story in small groups to their peers.

Their focus was on using movement, expression and gesture to carefully explain the book and create interest for the audience watching the retell.

Children in 2F

In their theme, 2S have been finding out about the Rainforest as a 'habitat'.
The Rainforest is overwhelmed by a wide variety of animals and insects living over the 4 layers.
The children have written a poem titled "Who Lives In The Rainforest?" 
We focused on verbs and adverbs.

 Ethan 2S

Oliver 2S

Thank you for checking our page. See you next week for the Election! 

Lots and lots of listening!

Year 1
Welcome back!
This week we have been looking at the poem There's Something in the Garden Shed which is about a sly monster hiding in the garden shed. We listened to it being read then joined in using clear voices. On Monday we had some fun added actions to each part of the poem.

Here are two children in 1A acting out their favourite verse.

Year 2
Our theme this half term is Tropical Rainforests. We began our week looking at and listening to the sounds of the rainforest.
We gathered a range of descriptive vocabulary then we used them to create a class poem. This will enable us to write our own poem later in the week.
Here are 2F's ideas.

Here is 2S's poem.

After listening to the rainforest sounds 2D  worked together as a class to write the first verse of a poem. Once we had a verse we went away and wrote our own version of the poem.

 Danny 2D

Scott 2D

Check back next week for more examples of our hard work.

Cooking for Colin

Year 1

This week in Literacy we had our first go at hot seating. We worked in pairs to take on the role of Colin (the hungry caterpillar) and an interviewer. We took on the role of Colin the give us ideas of how he was feeling once he had eaten a gigantic amount of food in preparation for our diary writing next week. 
To show that we were Colin we made our physicality really fat and we tried to look as queasy as we could.

Children in 1M

On Friday we learnt some grammar rules to help us improve our writing. Here is Julia's work on possessive apostrophes. She was able to identify the proper noun and add the apostrophe to show possession. 

Julia 1A

Year 2

This week Year 2 have been looking at instructions and recipes. On Thursday 2S wrote a recipe for a huge, rude monster…

Nisa 2S

The monster’s soup contained a range of ingredients such as massive bats, horrible, hard and old marshmallows!

As well as using descriptive ingredients, 2S also had to remember to use imperative verbs and adverbs.

Finan 2F

Finan has used time connectives and the imperative verb in his work. To make his delicious recipe even more detailed he now needs to add adverbs to describe the imperative verb.

Look Out! Witch!

Year 1
On Wednesday we watched a short video about a stalk called Peck who worked for Gus. Gus would create various animal babies out of clouds and magic then Peck would deliver them to their families. However, Peck did not enjoy his job as it often meant delivering dangerous animals. We pretended to be Peck writing a letter of resignation explaining to Gus that we have had enough!
Here is Jessica's letter:

On Thursday we went on our trip to The Look Out Discovery Center. We had a wonderful day filled with hands on science fun. There were five 'zones' to explore but majority favored the Build It Zone.

 Children in 1A experimenting with the digger!

 Child in 1A building a wall.

 Child in 1A calling the construction company for more bricks. 

 Boys from 1M hitting the bottom of plastic tubes creating music.

Child in 1M making ripples in water by creating a vibration.

Year 2

WANTED!

2F have been practicing writing through their theme topic of witches and wizards.

Please help! The crazy witch Andy is on the loose creating chaos in town! 2F have created wanted posters to help catch this wizard. Senuth in 2F has described some of Andy the witches' tricks such as turning all the buses in town pink, hiding all the tasty food and covering every single car in zebra print.

Senuth has used a range of different adjectives and an exclamation mark to add emphasis to the word wanted. To develop his work further he must continue to green pen edit checking over his spelling. 

Please comment on our blog and let us know what we are doing. Thank you!

Wiggly worms and healthy bodies

Year 1
Last week we explored What the Ladybird Heard by Julia Donaldson through a variety of drama and retelling activities. This week we hugged the text by using it as a model to write our own version- What the Wiggly Worm Heard.

Here is Luke's fantastic story. We wrote the opening and build up on Wednesday then completed the problem, resolution and ending on Thursday. 

Luke 1A

Here is another examples of our stories. Iria has written her  the resolution and ending then edited it to make it even better.

Iria 1M

Year 2

In Science, we are looking at how we stay healthy.

This week we looked at how exercise effects our body. We carried out an experiment by exercising for a length of time and then recorded how our bodies changed as a result.

Oliver 2S