As part of our focus on reading this session, today P1, P5 and P7 had an inspirational talk from the author, Emma Mooney. She shared where some of her ideas for writing come from, really making us think about how a simple idea can be transformed into the beginning of a whole novel. We learned about the importance of an interesting and engaging first line of a story, and were challenge to try and recognise different novels from the first sentence of the book.

When asked what advice she would given aspiring authors, Emma shared that it is extremely important to have people around you who believe in you, and to stick to the ‘not yet’ plan by not giving up, even when things get tough. We thought that this was great advice for everyone, not just those who want to become authors.

Thank you to Emma for such an encouraging and motivating talk.

On Friday, P5B presented our love of books and reading in our class assembly. We also shared the reading skills we have been developing through our IDL context for learning, George’s Marvellous Medicine.

Questioning:

We have been learning to ask and answer a range of questions about a text. We looked at what makes a quality question and know that it has to make someone think hard about a text. We wrote a set of questions about the first two chapters of the book, then tested our partners on them.

Predicting:

We have been learning to use clues from a text to make realistic predictions. We used these skills to write chapter 7 of George’s Marvellous Medicine, which we then shared with our Grandparents at our Novel Natters session.

Visualising:

We have been learning to use key words and phrases from a text to create images in our mind. This week, we had to select the words and phrases that the author uses when he described what happened when Grandma took the medicine and discuss how these stimulated our senses and helped us to visualise the scene.

Book Week Scotland

Here are some of the ways we celebrated Book Week Scotland: