Category: Literacy

This week we worked in our House groups to create verses for a poem.  We chose an aspect of the outdoor area as a focus for our verse.  In the end we worked as a whole class to create this poem.

Some of us looked at the trees, some explored the mud and others chose the leaves.

Here is our short poem.

 

This afternoon we went on a Winter Walk around the outdoor area.  We stopped at three different spots – our playground, the Primary 7 playground and the Eco Garden.  At each spot we were to look to see what we could see, listen to what we could hear and feel the air.  We worked as a whole class to come up with ideas for phrases or sentences to make into a poem.

 

We discussed the fact that if we were to do this at different times of year and different times of day we would see and hear many different things!  Even if we had carried out this task last Tuesday it was much colder and there was frost on the grass and the trees.

 

We decided as a class that our poem did not need to rhyme but that we would do a verse for each different spot that we stopped at.

 

Here we are on our walk and this is the poem that we came up with during our short lesson together.

 

 

 

 

We have been working hard on using interesting vocabulary when telling stories.

A few weeks ago we used stones as characters for our stories.  Our little creatures had eyes and a mouth but they could be any animal or character that we wanted.  We used our imagination to come up with stories and adventures for our little friends.

We then shared our story firstly with a partner, then another pair and finally a few of us shared our stories with the whole class.  We all enjoyed and had a giggled at some of the crazy adventures that our little stone creatures had experienced.

 

Yesterday we created some super characters outside using chalk, shells, sticks and stones.

We have been working on using adjectives and upleveling sentences.  This helped us as we used our imagination to create characters and simple stories about their adventures.  In pairs we came up with names for our character, what they are like and what they enjoy doing.

Some of our characters included the following:

Bob – Bob is not happy because someone stole his football.  He loves playing football and he is sad that he lost his.

Lucy – Lucy likes playing at the beach with her friends.  She is kind and friendly.  She also likes baking.

Rainbow – Rainbow is a Princess and she likes wearing pretty dresses.  One day she went on an adventure in her village and got her favourite dress all dirty!

This will help us with our story writing in class as we practise stretching our imagination and developing vocabulary that we can use.

As part of our Outdoor Learning we have been working on sentence building and upleveling.  For this activity we had to hunt for the rhyming words that Mrs James had hidden in the playground.  In our Houses we collected all of the plates together and sorted them into rhyming families.  We then had fun coming up with some rhyming sentences and some silly sentences using the words that we had found.

Some of us remembered nursery rhymes and songs that include rhyming words too!

This morning we enjoyed reading Gorilla Loves Vanilla!  The main character Sam has an ice-cream shop and he has some interesting visitors one day.  He manages to make every strange request into a sundae!  The cow asked for daisies and long grass, the chicken asked for wriggly worms but the gorilla just wanted good old vanilla!

 

We used our mud kitchen to create our own crazy sundaes.  We also drew sketches showing the ingredients for our crazy dishes!

 

Then we made sure that we washed our hands thoroughly with soapy water!

This morning we went on a bear hunt just like the characters in the story, “We’re Going on a Bear Hunt” by Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury.  We put on our wellies and trekked across the pitch into the ‘long grass’, we crossed ‘the river’ and we entered ‘the forest’ to look for a bear…a BIG one.

What fun we had pretending to be out in the wilds looking for bears when actually we were just across the pitch.  We discussed the adjectives used in the story as well as trying to imagine the sights and sounds that we would encounter in a real forest.  We were able to stop and listen for the different sounds in the school grounds as well as feel the long grass and smell the trees around us.  Some of us even spotted a bear in the trees, this resulted in some excitement as we used our imaginations to get lost in the story.

Well done to everyone who brought in their wellies which enabled us to venture a bit further onto the muddy, wet grass.  Thank you!