As we continue our study of Charlotte’s Web, we began the week looking at some vocabulary from the book. We learned dictionary skills, using our knowledge of the alphabet. We practised together at first then we worked on individual tasks; looking up tricky words and writing down the definition.
Also on the theme of Charlotte’s Web, we have been looking at farming, in particular the different types of farms we have in Scotland and the food and produce that comes from each. We also investigated the foods that are made from farm produce, e.g., cereal, yoghurts, meat pies, bread, etc. Here are some pictures of our shops and farmer’s markets full of products made from farm produce.
On Tuesday, we began to learn about using speech marks when writing direct speech. We learned the rules of how to use them, then chose which way we would like to practice using them. There were 3 activities to choose from: 1. Write out a story changing the text in speech bubbles to direct speech, using speech marks correctly. 2. Copy sentences on a whiteboard – writing the speech marks in the correct places and ask a friend to check it before rubbing it out and moving on to the next sentence. 3. Find sentences in your reading book which feature speech marks, copy the sentences onto the graffiti wall.
For a first attempt we all did very well, we were enthusiastic and all managed to use speech marks in some format. There was a lot to remember. We are good at spotting where the speech marks should go, we need to remember the other rules of punctuation and continue to use full stops, question marks and exclamation marks correctly – inside the speech marks. We also need to remember to take a new line every time a new person speaks. We will continue to practise this over the next few weeks.
On Thursday Wilber met Charlotte in Chapter 4 of our novel. After lunch when we arrived back in to our classroom, our Charlotte had spun ‘Salutations’ into our classroom web. We are looking forward to hearing how Charlotte and Wilbur’s friendship develops next week. We then made our own spiders webs. We practised using different types of lines – straight and curved to make the shapes we needed. Some children chose to colour using a paint wash and some chose to make colourful webs using oil pastels. Drawing the lines was tricky to begin with and we had to be quite resilient and keep trying to draw the outside of the web. The results are very good and I’m looking forward to putting them up in the classroom.
Next week, we are looking forward to the benchball festival and will be reading more of Charlotte’s Web, thinking about the friendship between Charlotte and Wilber and how we can be good friends to each other.
Have a nice weekend, P3B and Mrs Kennedy 🙂
