Home Learning Heroes – 22.01.21 – Foundation
Foundation have blown me away this week with their phenomenal attitude towards their learning! They have been ‘Tryatops’ by trying their best and have challenged themselves in all areas of their learning. We have been talking about the ‘Zones of Regulation’ this week and are making sure we are discussing our feelings with our adults. In maths, we have been experimenting with the part-whole model and the bar model. In literacy, we have been writing some beautiful letters to Gerald the giraffe from ‘Dear Zoo.’ We have also been practising our digraphs in phonics and challenged ourselves to read some adjacent consonant words! We have been developing our skills in oracy and have been debating on whether or not zoos should exist. In our zoom sessions, we have been playing some games such as ‘Blankety Blank’ and ‘The Chase!’
Amazing work Foundation, you all deserve a huge STAR!
Take a look at our incredible learning below:
Well, that’s another week of impeccable learning coming to an end!! Year 5, you must be exhausted; you have all worked so incredibly hard and been so resilient with your learning.
We’ve seen some amazing writing – some of your best yet, we might add (we’re not going to let a Lockdown get in the way of our Super North Star!) We have been so proud seeing your love of learning grow and grow, despite these difficult times, but year 5 you have risen to the challenge …… and excelled!!
Have a look at some of the incredible things we have completed this week:
Wow, we are completely overwhelmed with how much work is being shared with us from Year 5 at home. It’s impossible to share everyones – there’s just so much!!! Here is a snippet of all of the amazing work that our wonderful children are doing at home.
We researched the photographer and artist Andy Warhol and had a go at making a digital montage of ourselves replicating his style.
During our zoom sessions, we like to have bit of fun too!! Today, we watched a video from Rob Biddulph and tried to draw the same character with our paper on our heads!!!
Continuing our learning journey of ‘The Time Traveller’, we have spent our time at home building time machines, making timelines of our lives and speaking to the older generations of our families to see how things have changed in their lifetime. We even had a look at some photos from https://www.francisfrith.com/teignmouth/photos to see what our local skate park used to look like!! We couldn’t believe how different it looked! Have a look at Thomas’ picture!
We are continuing to work really hard on our core subjects of maths, literacy and SPaG with the addition of some of the Oak National Academy’s videos. Today, we learnt all about non-finite clauses and wrote some of our own. We shared these during our afternoon zoom sessions.
Finally, we are reminding ourselves to look after our mental health. Mrs Prentice spoke to us about our ’10 a day’ – Our very own magic. We realised we are doing lots of these every day.
Well done Year 5! Everyone at Hazeldown are so proud of how hard you are all working – don’t forget to say a big thank you to the adults at home who are helping you too.
Here are some of the creative and wonderful things Year 3 have been up to this week?
Do you recognise this famous Stone Age Monument?
What would you use this Stone Age tool for?
Here’s a timeline of different period of the Stone Age and someone else has been comparing them.
Here is some of our literacy from this week. We looked at informal writing and have been using lots of different word classes in our sentences.
How do you help others know your learning? Have a look at this sign someone made for their door.
Foundation have blown me away this week with their amazing remote learning. They have all been so resilient when facing a new challenge and have made Miss Banning and Miss Redwood so proud. It has been so lovely to see your smiley faces on Zoom and I have enjoyed playing lots of fun games with you all. This week, we have learnt lots about our new topic of ‘Starry Night’ and have introduced our new Talk for Writing topic – ‘Dear Zoo’. We have also been learning about one more and one less in maths.
Well done Foundation, you are SUPERSTARS! 🙂
Look at all of our fantastic learning:
This week in Ebony, we have been talking about metacognition.
Part of this has been during our spelling sessions. At the start of the term, we were tested on the first half of our Year 6 spelling list. Then, over the course of the term, we used a ranged a strategies to learn those spellings we did not get correct. This week, we were tested on the same words again. We then compared our results to the results from the start of term.
Most of us had improved, but some had not (or only improved a small amount).
This whole process involved metacognition (or thinking about learning).
To start with we identified areas we needed to improve, then we planned our approach by choosing a strategy that we thought would work and finally we evaluated our approach by seeing how much we had improved.
When we work on the second half of the Year 6 spellings, we will need to look back at our approach and consider if we need to change it or keep it the same.
This week in Apple class, we have been learning about many significant people from the past. We have been learning about Rosa Parks especially and her stand against racism. We were very surprised to learn that in the past, racial inequality existed and stopped certain individuals from living as they do now. We have acted out a scene of Rosa Parks’ protest on a bus and discussed why this was an important part of History! 
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We have been working really hard to challenge ourselves in Foundation. We learnt the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears and created our own story map. We then decided to uplevel our story map by adding adjectives and adverbs from our vocabulary wall! We thought about all the different adjectives we could use to describe the bears and chose to order them according to how effective they were.
Palm class have been looking at how to write Biographies. Yesterday they looked at the Biography of the famous author Roald Dahl and today they had a go at writing their own biographies on Walt Disney. Over the next few weeks we will be working hard on learning about all the features found in biographies and about Rosa Parks, the significant person that we will be studying in order to write a biography about her in a few weeks.
Over the past 3 weeks, the children have been learning about Roman Myths. The children have immersed themselves in the story of Romulus and Remus.
Today the children put all their learning into their final Big Write.
Today, in our literacy lesson, we did an activity called ‘mapping the text’.
‘Mapping the text’ involves replacing individual words with symbols or small drawings that represent the word. For example we might replace the word ‘she’ with a drawing of a stick person with long hair.
Here are some examples:
In class, we discussed why we do this activity. This activity helps us to embed high quality writing in our head – but in a different way! When we read high quality texts, we make new connections in our brain to help us remember. When we map high quality texts, we make different connections that also help us remember.
When it is time to write our own texts, we are able to draw on all of the high quality texts to help us create our own high quality writing.
Cherry class have been looking at expanded noun phrases. Before we could begin writing expanded noun phrases, we had to understand what a noun was. We then put the nouns into a noun phrase before adding a bit of extra information to create an expanded noun phrase.
Today, Cherry class became news reporters ready to create an newspaper article on a heroic/villainous battle. Half of us were reporters whilst the other half were eyewitnesses to the battle. As reporters, we asked lots of questions to build up a picture of what had happened. Then, we created speech bubbles with eyewitness’ statements written on them. Tomorrow we use these speech bubbles to practice writing with quotation marks.
In Ebony class, we have started a new literacy unit – writing short stories based in the Arctic or Antarctic.
We have used colourful semantics to identify the parts of the sentence. Then we have added details by using expanded noun phrases – these give more information about the noun. You can see an example that someone came up with in the picture.
We have also been looking at using parenthesis to add extra information to a sentence – a lot of us wrote relative clauses about one or both of the nouns in a sentence. This extra information can be put inside brackets, commas or dashes.
For example:
The seal dived out of the water. (quite boring sentence)
The seal – which was escaping from an orca – dived out of the water.
Some of us went even further and experimented with having a comma inside the parenthis:
The sun shone down on us. (quite boring sentence)
The sun (that was brilliant gold, like it is most days) shone down on us.
Today we have been learning words to include in our newspaper writing. Some of these are common exception words for Year 3 and 4. This means they don’t fit the normal spelling rules and its really important we learn to spell them correctly. We played hangman to help us with this. Later we role played what some of the words meant and matched them to their definitions.
This word has had its vowles removed. Can you figure out which word it is? f_m_ _s
This morning has been the first chance for Ebony class to show off their amazing writing.
We have been studying non-chronological reports in our Literacy unit. As part of this we have looked at a range of high quality texts and learnt new skills to help us make our writing as interesting as possible for the reader.
This morning we got to put it all into action in a big write session.
As you can see from the pictures, we are using a range of approaches to ensure that our writing is of the highest quality. This includes: spell checkers, chromebooks and purple pens.
I’m so impressed with everyone who is still working hard at home. We have been looking at all the Google Forms, stories, spelling and grammar work that so many of you are sending in.
Thank you for all your hard work.
We are very much looking forward to seeing you all in September.
Have a read of these wonderful stories.
Emeralds problem.
Once upon a time there was a bright, colourful bird called Emerald. He was called this because of his beautiful green feathers that glittered in the sun. Emerald lived near the sea, on a tropical island. There are loads of palm trees, flowers, insects to eat and fruit but best of all he had his friends. He likes to play hide and seek with his friends, flying through the trees looking for the best spots to hide.
It is a hot sunny day on the tropical island. Emerald and his friends were playing their favourite game. They were flying over the beach, into the trees getting ready to hide. One, two three, shouted Emerald it was his turn to count. When in the distance he saw a dark blue shape coming towards the island. “ WHAT IS THAT “? shouted Emerald. His friends all quickly flew back to him.
The next second the dark blue thing landed on the beach. It was a big Blue bird, with the most amazing feathers. Emerald and his friends flew down on to the sand next to him and asked him “ Who are you?”
“Sparks.” said the blue bird. “I am called this because of my magnificent, shiny feathers.”
All of Emeralds friends started to tweet, they all thought that his feathers were awesome. But one bird didn’t agree. It was Emerald
“No they’re not.” cried Emerald, he was jealous of the new bird.
“ Come and play with us. “ said Emerald’s friends. This made Emerald very angry. He didn’t like Sparks. He didn’t want to play with Sparks. He had a mean idea he would play with sparks and he would help him to hide. In a dark cave, where nobody was allowed to go.
“Come with me Sparks, I’ll help you to hide” said Emerald. Off they flew to find a great hiding place. When they got to the cave Emerald told Sparks, “stay here and find a good spot to hide, I’ll hide nearby so if I get found before you I won’t give your hiding place away. ” Sparks was afraid to go in the cave but he thought Emerald was being nice and he wouldn’t leave him alone he would be near so he flew down into the cave.
As soon as Sparks had disappeared into the cave, Emerald flew away.
It was nearly bedtime and all of Emeralds’ friends had been found. They looked everywhere for Sparks but could not find him. They are sad that they can’t find him and are getting worried. Emerald is feeling bad, he should not have told Sparks to hide in the cave. It is scary in the cave. He decided to go and get him. “Follow me. I think i know where he is.” When they got to the cave they saw Sparks crying outside.
“I thought you wouldn’t find me. Emerald told me to hide in here and he didn’t come back for me, he said he would be near me but I know now that he wasn’t!”
Emerald looked sad, he felt bad that he told Sparks to hide in the cave when nobody is allowed in there. The other birds were angry with him, he started to cry.
“I only told Sparks to hide in the cave because I was jealous of his beautiful feathers. You all thought mine were the best until Sparks came along. I thought that if I got rid of him you would like me more. I know it was wrong, I’m really sorry.”
Sparks looked at Emerald, he could see that he was sorry. “It is ok, maybe we can both have the best feathers?”
“That would be nice.” said Emerald and all of the birds were friends again.
The blue-tit and the owl
Once upon a time Mr Meanie landed on a wire over a chasm. Soon Mr Yawn landed next to him and did a colossal yawn.
“YAWN!” Mr Meanie didn’t like it so he began to peck Mr Yawn. Eventually their friends came and thought it was a game so they started to peck each other. There was chaos, everywhere!
Suddenly, an owl landed on the wire a few metres away and said: “hello”. Mr Meanie did a silly imitation of the owl. The blue-tits (Mr Meanie, Mr Yawn etc.) walked away. The owl flapped over to them and they started chirping angrily. Suddenly Mr Meanie and Mr Yawn pecked the owl as hard as they could. Soon they noticed that the owl was slipping. Mr Meanie got a plan and it was to peck the owl’s feet. peckpeckpeckpeckpeck until…
TWANG!!!
The blue-tits were catapulted through the air like arrows from a bow, so fast that all their feathers came off.
Meanwhile, down below the feathers were falling through the sky; the owl blew them. Suddenly a not-that-blue blue-tit fell from the sky and the owl’s laughter erupted from him like bicarbonate of soda and vinegar from an overstuffed volcano.
The moral of the story: don’t bully people just because they’re different.
We have been blown away by the incredible effort our Year Two children have been putting into their learning at home. They are working hard with their maths using the Google Forms, using scientific vocabulary in literacy and carrying out lots of science as part of their SOLE work. Please do keep sending in your wonderful photos.
Year 2 you are incredible.
It is great to see that so many of you have thrown yourselves into our new topic. It’s a shame the weather has turned as it’s a great one for being outdoors.
I love how creative some of your are being at home with your maths and making patterns. Some of you have made pooters ready for all your bug hunting and lots of you are already learning lots of awesome facts.
Have a look below at different word classes some people have been sorting after going on their bug hunts.
What’s the best minibeast you have found so far?
Please keep sharing your learning with us. We love to see what you have been up to.
Thank you for the wonderful stories that you have been sending in or writing in your books. I have another one to share with you here. I hope you enjoy it. I hope to start reading some of these and putting the link in the video file so please keep checking back to see if yours appears or email it in.
Year 5 have spent the last few weeks learning about poems and poetry devices so they could write their own poems about visiting another planet. All the pupils have worked really hard researching about their planets and bringing them to life through personification, similes and metaphors.
Here are some poems Miss Franks and Miss Halloway have received. Miss Franks has also posted some videos of pupils performing their poetry on a previous blog post.
Toby T
Mercury
The sky reminds me of stars,
Acting really bright.
Mercury the ball of paint,
Acts like a firefly, different from the others.
I am free with mercury,
Feeling like home.
Mercury is always dancing,
In the system is a blast to have a planet as a friend.
Leaving space, leaving amazed,
The depressing feeling hit me.
Mercury will not give up dancing,
Seeing the green and blue of Earth coming closer.
Oliver
Jupiter
Jupiter all covered in gas,
is massive in size and mass,
I look at him through my telescope in the dark night;
the dark, soot, black night,
The sky is black,
but I have some light,
my lamp is very bright,
when I see his face,
it makes me jump,
because he is really close up,
he’s 4.2 to 6.2 au away,
but that doesn’t stop me seeing him, yay,
he smiles at me and I smile back,
I really think he likes to be out in that galaxy so black,
he has lots of hankies,
for blowing his nose,
for he supports the Yankees.
The gigantic noise that came from the jets,
were louder than I wanted to bet,
when I got into space I gave a huge cheer,
for it had taken two days to get here,
now I can hear a low whistling sound,
because I am now Jupiter bound,
the sound I heard was like a low hooting sound,
like hundreds of Owls were soaring past me,
in search of a shopping spree,
when I reached his magnetic force,
which was 14 times the size of earth,
and I’m not talking about its berth.
In the distance in the fog,
which is sort of like a bog,
I can see a rocky core,
AARGH I feel so unsure,
I’m going to explore,
suddenly,
diamonds rain down on me,
this is going to be supapaaa on Jupiter.
As fast as a cheetah,
I soar through the air,
leaving Jupiter behind forever,
I fly swiftly past meteoroids and comets galore,
In a few days more,
I’ll be ashore,
When I leave him he starts to cry,
“So” I say “goodbye,”
As I sail through the air,
with the wind in my hair,
I really want to see a huge fluffy bear,
I dream of the bangs and the crashes of earth,
As I’m back home,
I heard Jupiter moan.
Evie
Neptune
When I come out at night I see her hiding in her house,
Sad and alone , she looks so small and afraid like a mouse,
When the morning light fills the sky she sits and waits,
She hides and cries but no one hears her,
In her little house so blue and dark she lies waiting for someone,
But no one comes,
I feel so unhappy, like a sad movie
She’s dejected with no friends.
When I stand here on Earth she is 4.5716 billion km.
In a rocket I sit coming to you,
I see the night sky dancing around me,
I hear the stars whispering and giggling as I go past,
I see the planets chatting and walking whilst they orbit the sun,
But no Neptune.
The Earth way behind me no turning back,
As I get closer i see her neighbouring planets,
Jupiter and his beautiful 67 moons,
Saturn with her spinning rings,
And Uranus and his cold temperature.
I see you there in front of me,
I land beside you standing outside your door.
I’ve arrived.
My feet steadily touched dear Neptunes yard,
I felt myself shivering as I moved around.
No wonder she was hiding in her tiny, grey house,
I saw her peeping out her boarded window,
I waved and she disappeared.
I began exploring her planet,
But then I heard something,
I walked to the noise and saw a kitten
with one eye like a cyclops.
I picked it up and saw its collar,
its name was Neptune Jr. I put it on the dusty, blue ground and
it hopped and skipped around before
disappearing in Neptune’s bedroom window.
It’s time to say goodbye to this planet,
I must go back to Earth,
Neptunes eyes glowing with tears as her
only friend leaves,
As my rocket takes of she cries,
I’ll be back I shout from inside.
She sighed.
I’m now travelling through space again,
I see the other planets talking and chatting.
I begin to cry.
Goodbye Neptune. Hello Earth.
Dora
Emily
Anya
The Moon
The sky is lit up by the light of the moon,
a few twinkling stars dancing through the night sky,
the moon is a fascinating thing you see,
a beautiful sight to be seen by you and me,
a saucer of milk floating in the gloomy, dark sky,
it dances through the night,
like a ballerina dancing on a big stage
looking down at her audience ,
the moon makes me feel so sleepy
as sleepy as a hedgehog ready to hibernate.
The rocket fires up, rattling, shaking and roaring like a giant beast awaking from his sleep,
shaking like a leaf I am thrust through the atmosphere
in a colossal towering rocket,
earth hanging in the distance like it’s being held by an invisible string,
stars shooting past so fast like they’re being fired from a gun,
then there it is I stare in awe 4.53 billion years old,
The Moon……and then deafening silence.
As I step out onto the grey, dusty surface of the magnificent moon,
the emptiness of this desolate atmosphere hits me,
I feel as sick as a dog as I hear the echoing of wolves crying in the distance,
moon dust puffing up beneath my feet,
like a smoke machine being turned on,
adrenalin swishing through my nervous, shaking body,
hundreds of craters cover the surface,
I float around them like a balloon bouncing in the wind.
Tired and ready for home,
I leave my friend behind,
the engines rumble,vibrate and erupt like a volcano beneath me,
streams of stars shoot past me illuminating the dark atmosphere,
closer and closer I get and there I see it, a blue ball with swirls of colour,
Earth
home to you and me.
Bertie
The Glossy Silver Moon
The moon the moon is shining up there
The moon can be seen by a wild bear
The moon can be seen anywhere
Even in Australia where they will be asleep
Where they won’t hear any cars beep
The moon cannot be seen in the ocean deep
It is like the moon whispers to you in your sleep
To tell you it’s time to sleep
And not to weep
Travelling through space at the speed of sound
Where you’re heading to the moon, all round
Where no king will be crowned
If you look down you’ll see the ground fading
with people underneath you looking up and waving
it might feel like you’re racing
The earth is looking as small as a pea
on my way there i will be having my tea
In my rocket I feel like a pea…
…in a pod
The moon looks like an elephant grey golf ball
Floating in space like a puffa fish in a pool
Once I’ve landed on the moon I won’t be using any rocket fuel
You will realise that you don’t live on a flat land
The base of the moon may feel like dry sand
When you step off the rocket on to this new land
All I can hear is black silence, all i can see is mother earth
Lonely like a leaf blown off a tree, all i can feel is dizzy from the low gravity
Now that I’m on the moon a new adventure shall begin
Looking around and all I see is darkness upon me
No aliens to be found but yet to see
Now I take my first steps successfully
Nothing to hear, nothing to smell except the suit I am in
Movement is tough you feel like a robot
Every step is like going through mud, wading
Being lonely is not fun, nobody to talk to
The adventures I’m having are extraordinary
The experience is priceless, but if you get stuck there is no one to help you
I’m travelling in my spaceship on my way home
I can see the stone grey moon where I’ve just been
Spinning around like a stuntman in a movie scene
Now that I am landing it felt quicker than reality
It was fun up there, but no fun alone
I had an amazing adventure, but now I’m back home
Stepping out of the spaceship the high gravity makes me dizzy
Up on the moon I was never that busy
Back to my home to see my wonderful friends and family
Lucas
Disco Dancing Moon……..
When I see the Moon arrive..
Her face is glowing like a flamboyant disco ball. Sparkling bright in the ebony night sky. Sometimes I can’t see her, where she is hiding..
But when she does appear, it makes me think of birthday times, dancing around in the disco room.
I feel happy and calm when she appears.
It is my call to bed time, which I think I will ignore, as I’d love to join the party
and have a joyful bash.
She wears a dazzling party dress. As she parties the night away.
I’m in a more casual suit, my pajamas. Every night to her is like an academy award show. Dazzling twinkly stars surround her.
Her enemies are the marshmallow clouds that hide her beautiful face, from the human eyes.
She brightens up the night, like a lightbulb lightens up your room.
When it is night she appears, she illuminates and shows the way for our nocturnal friends.
After her wakeful night, you can even sometimes see her sleeping in the day.
Lucas’ second poem
Round Beautiful Moon
The moon is as round as a football
The moon shone like a light bulb
The moon’s surface is dusty as a dust ball
The moon is as old as dinosaurs
You can move on the moon like a piece of paper falling from a height
The moon is as white as snow
The moon’s surface looks like sand paper
The journey to the moon as is like a roller coaster
Travelling to the moon is takes a long time like a queue waiting for a new ride
The moon is as lonely as a forest
The moon is as deserted as a building site
Harry B
Ruby
Ruby has voice recorded her poem ‘The Moon’
Zach
Zach’s video can be watch here: Video (2)
Maisie
The Beast?
We are looking forward to any more poems that are being sent in. Year 5 should be very proud of themselves, they have worked very hard on their poetry, well done!
Bonsai have been very busy this week with all sorts of activities! It has been great to see so many of Bonsai really getting involved in their learning and other activities.
Here is Harry and his wonderful assistant Anna explaining how gravity works.
Click on the link to listen!
Thank you to each and every one of you who have sent in videos explaining gravity. You were all very creative using different props from around your house and a huge thank you to all the family members (including dogs) who got involved!
In addition to this, Harry has recreated the moon phases from Oreos, don’t they look amazing!
Harry has also been busy writing the first verse of his poem.
Brilliant use of personification Harry!
If you want to read more poetry from year 5, there are more examples of the pupils’ poetry work on a previous blog post.
Anya has been busy creating top trump cards about the planets and has even had a go a little bit of painting.
Evie has been busy researching about craters and how they are created.
Ruby has been busying doing the bunny hop challenge as her PE. If you want to have a go, have a look in the PE folder.
She has also built her own reading den!
Seth has created his own circuit that can tell you when a door is open or closed!
Lucas has been very creative with his SOLE work and created these wonderful posters about craters and Sir Isaac Newton.
It has been wonderful to see all the activities you’ve been doing and I can’t wait to see what you get up to next week!
As part of our space topic, year 5 have been learning about poetry in literacy. They have been looking at a variety of poems and their features. Year 5 have now begun to write their own. Here are the first verses to their planet poems:
Dora:
The moon’s warm, kindly face stares down on me,
Her starlit throne hanging in the inky sky.
She pokes her head through the curtains of bedrooms across the world,
Dispelling nightmares and welcoming sweet dreams,
A bright beacon ,as bright as the sun, dangling in the sky, guiding me.
Emily:
Purple planet how big you are
How graceful you are
How clever and amazing you are
High up in the sky
Far and bright big and bold and out at night
I look at you and feel nice
Your purple embrace
Fills me with faith
My favourite place at night
I wait till days go by
To sit at night just to say hi
My purple planet how i wounder about you day and night
Good night
Ruby:
The moon
The sky is dark like a light has been turned off
it is like turning my light of to go sleep
a beautiful moon appears and it’s not just any moon
it’s my moon, i look up at her and she says goodnight
my moon she smiles at me and gives me a wink
when its day she groans and because she doesn’t want to see me
go and play without her, I feel happy like someone’s always there for me
she’s like me I want to puta blanket round her because she is so cold she is 123c.
Evie:
Neptune
When I come out at night I see her hiding in her house,
Sad and alone , she looks so small and afraid like a mouse,
When the morning light fills the sky she sits and waits,
She hides and cries but no one hears her,
In her little house so blue and dark she lies waiting for someone,
But no one comes,
I feel so unhappy, like a sad movie
She’s dejected with no friends.
When I stand here on Earth she is 4.5716 billion km.
Isaac:
Blue Neptune
The sky so big and black Neptune shines like a juwel,
where does it start where does it end.
The blue like the sea but with no start no end,
As Neptune parties the clouds go on and on.
It giggles in the day and sleeps through the night,
Neptune is 4.5717 km away how I wonder.
Blossom:
Uranus
The smooth blue sky the secrets it hides not visible from Earth .
But, beyond there are planets far away.
With the Uranus’s birth.
Is only 3.1129 billion kilometers away from us.
Uranus looks like a bue shot hit him .
But if you were on him you would feel very dim.
However, in the sky he likes to play hide and seek.
As the planet on its side gets ready to sleep, you may get a peek.
Uranus feels like a love shot into your heart.
However as he’s gas if stand him you would fall right through just like a fart.
Joe:
Mars
Mars the red planet,
Velvet rocky and silent.
For where the volcanoes erupt,
For where the asteroids smash.
Loud, loud
Silent
Life existed one time before,
But now the red planet is nothing no more.
Except frozen lakes,
Volcanoes bake
And everything crumbles.
Mars the red planet
The marvellous red planet.
Lyla went a step further and has already written her entire poem:
Saturn Sensation
I look up at the twinkling sky,
Your shining light will never die,
You’re a speck of light like a torch in the air,
You are one of a kind not just rare,
You are a shining firefly in the Milky Way,
You’re a beating heart to show me the way,
When I went to see thee, butterflies erupted in my tummy,
I really did want my mummy,
I saw your illuminated kind face beaming down at me,
Nothing like a little bee.
Now I fly up into the stars,
But why be trapped behind monotonous bars,
When you could go and visit Mars?
I flew across your golden glow,
How you got so big I wouldn’t know.
I heard the stars whisper as quiet as a mouse, some 1.472 billion km was my house!
I saw you, a planet Knight on a mighty steed of stars,
As fast as a lightning bolt you streak across the blazing stars.
Yes there you were as I sped across the sky, a bullet in an inky black abyss.
I saw your smile a ring wrapped around you like a ball with a belt,
I flew past the sun and I thought I would melt,
I stretched out my hand your touch as rough as fresh bark from a tree,
Yet up close you’re as huge as eternity.
Thank you for all of your hard work year 5 pupils and parents. We can’t wait to read the rest of your poetry.
Over the course of this week Year Two are putting together their stories which are set at the seaside.
If you are stuck for ideas, see if you can magpie something from these examples. Think about what has made them successful. What exciting vocubulalry have they used?
Story Number 1:
Banana Island by EW
Banana Island is a beautiful hot place in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It’s covered in tall coconut trees. Its sand is soft and white. Its seas are calm and blue.
On the edge of banana island live very best friends Tom Crab, Tim Lobster, Gary the Sea snail, Whaley Whale and Sharkey shark. They have exploring adventures together.
One day while they were playing, a humongous wave came and washed sharky onto the sand, sharky was very scared because he was drying out from the sun, he tried to wiggle back into the sea with his fins but he couldn’t do it.
Sharky’s friends were thinking what to do for help. Suddenly Whaley said “I know! You 3 dig a trench from sharky to the sea as quickly as you can”. The team dug and dug with their little pinchers and Gary moved the sand with his shell.
Once the trench was dug, Whaley squirted a load of water out his blow hole onto Sharky and the trench, now Sharky used his fins again and started to slide down the trench. Another woosh from Whaley and Sharky slid back into the sea.
Sharky was so happy he swam around in circles and jumped out of the water like a dolphin.
His friends were relieved that he was safe again and excited to have their next adventure together…
The End
The beginning of another story:
Poison the man of war by PG
Chapter 1
“I never thought I would see Atlantia again,” said Taylor to Daisy, his dog.
Taylor and Daisy were sailing sadly home.
They had been looking for Taylor’s lost parents.
Their boat was a tiny dot on the calm vast ocean and Atlantia was shining brightly in the sunset.
Suddenly a long green tentacle came reaching out of the water and slowly pulled the top off a skyscraper on Atlantia.
Daisy whined scaredly but Taylor turned on the motor and started rowing bravely to Atlantia.
Taylor sped ashore and ran to the castle with Daisy as a dot behind him.
“A long tentacle?” exclaimed the king. “It must be Poison!”
Taylor thought that Poison was just a fairy tale, but now he knew that Poison must be defeated.
“Yes,” said the king. “And we were hoping you could do it.”
Over the past week, Bonsai have been sharing their work; it has been wonderful to see all the amazing learning that has been taking place at home. Please feel free to share any pictures of your work or any other activities that you’ve been doing whilst at home.
Jess has drawn a beautiful picture of one of her characters for her myth. She looks very powerful the picture is beautifully coloured in!
Additionally, Jess has draw a picture of Egyptian head piece worn by Nemes as part of her SOLE.
Evie has created a informative Powerpoint all about our solar system as part of our new topic; stargazers.
Finally, Maisie has been busy writing an Egyptian myth. She has used many synonyms and up-levelled her vocabulary to make her writing more interesting!
Under the unbearable Spanish heat, lived a magnificent and powerful queen. She was well loved by all her people , she brought life back to her kingdom after the previous rulers got overthrown by a new dynasty. Queen Esperanzo was well loved and admired by all except one, Esperanzo’s older brother Encanto. He lurks in the dark sinister shadows of his younger sister who owns the celebrated title of Queen. Even though Encanto is older by 5 years he is not King because he was not the first sibling in the royal family to get married. If his 14 year old sister Princess Belenza had married first she could have been Queen before him too. The young beautiful Princess Belenza despised her evil ,sinister brother and always knew he hated their raven haired affectionate sister /queen and always knew that he was planning an evil deed in his mind , and he what an evil deed it was going to be.
Well done to all of you who have shared your work. I would love to see what you’ve been up to! If you would like a chance for your work to uploaded to the blog, keep sending in your work. If you have been doing work in your book, take a picture of what you’ve done and send it in.
I would also love to see any work/activities you have completed from the additional activities folder.
Using a green screen app, our year 6 pupils have brought their writing to life, creating news reports on the importance of exercise. Watch their reports below:
Today, our year 6 pupils have been using a green screen app to film their news reports about the importance of exercise.
Keep an eye out for the finished product which will be available on our website next week!
We had so much fun in Literacy today. We played different games to help us learn and use a range of interesting vocabulary. We tested our memory skills to match words and pictures, we played a fun dice game and we drew our own pictures to go with different words. We acted out words, came up with words with the opposite meaning and practised putting the words into sentences.
To end the session, we played word bingo. The children were so excited, you could hear their squeals up and down the corridor!
In literacy, Bonsai were using shades of meaning to up-level their vocabulary. We used an online thesaurus to find synonyms that we could use in our narratives on ‘The Secret Garden’. After this, we had a go at using our new-found words in sentences ready to use on our stories.
Year Two have been working on improving a boring sentence using adjectives and adverbs.
How could you improve this sentence?
The frog jumped.
We had great fun in Literacy today, exploring the sounds different instruments make. We have been looking at poetry to do with our senses and were playing instruments and then writing down words to describe each sound.
We generated our own word bank which will support us when we come to write our own senses poems.
In literacy, we have been learning the difference between technical and general language. We used our skimming and scanning skills to read research sheets about gold before being language detectives to find technical and general vocabulary. Here are some examples of technical language we found: karat, density, malleable, atomic number and chemical. General language included; under, the, a, sometimes and often.
In literacy, we have been using collaboration to describe a picture from Alchemy Island. First, we created a mind-map of adjectives using our senses. Then we wrote sentences using our inference skills and ambitious language to describe the setting.
Willow and Maple class are really getting into our new Literacy story – “Traction Man”. They sequenced the story using pictures and were great at explaining their choices to each other and the rest of the class. If you want to watch a reading of the book at home, please find a YouTube link below.
Monkey Puzzle spent their Literacy lesson investigating ambitious, descriptive vocabulary to uplevel their sensentences. They worked really hard showing their understanding of learning values and how they can be used in all lesson to help them. We now have a great working wall of sentences that we can use in our narratives.
In Year Two, we are getting to grips with what we are going to write in our message in a bottle. We want to include why we became stranded.
Have a look at the description of the storm that cause the unlucky sailor to become washed up on a deserted island.
What a super effort! Which bits can you magpie for your description?
Yesterday Year 2 started using colourful semantics to up level some of their sentences.
Can you spot an adverb of time or an exciting verb?
Year 5 have been working hard using a Thesaurus to uplevel their vocabulary. They then had to decide on a order for their selection of words from the least amount of impact to the most.
We have an alien update for you. The children in Maple and Willow class today received an email from Professor Pong from the British Space and Alien Research company. He is planning to help us locate and send home the alien that crash landed on our playground a few weeks ago.
We will be building up to write an email back to him once we have more facts. To help us with our future email writing, we became Feature Detectives today, working in groups to find full stops, capital letters, question marks and finger spaces. We worked brilliantly together, collaborating and taking turns.
Both year 6 classes have spent time this week drafting out their paragraphs for their non-chronological reports about an animal of choice from the Arctic or Antarctica. They’ve shown great attitudes to learning by always looking to improve their writing and by using the resources available to them.
In Literacy we have been learning about non-chronological reports. As a part of this we have been looking at a range of examples.
In one of our sessions we became features detectives. We were looking for ‘generalising vocabulary’ (such as some, mostly, sometimes, often), and technical vocabulary (such as habitat, environment, resources).
Some of us then tried to find synonyms for some of the words. Synonyms are words that have the same meaning (happy, joyful etc).
Year 5 had an exciting Literacy lesson developing their dictionary skills and learning the definitions of complex words such as coronation and imprisonment.
In literacy, Year 3 have been writing stories based on the traditional tale of The Little Red Hen. We listened to the story and then wrote our own versions. Today we shared our stories with Year 1 – they enjoyed our stories!
Having finished their writing unit on Explanation Text before half term, Oak Class have been working with their Writing Buddies today to identify their successes in their writing and correct any errors they may have made. They then looked back at their first piece of work (Elicitation Task) and compared it to their Big Write (end task) and thought about what they had improved upon. They (and Mrs Cooke!) were very pleased with what they found!
In Fir and Redwood class, we have started thinking about the letter we are writing to a Chinese school. We have learnt a lot about Chinese schools and we used this to create some questions we would like to ask them:
Do you like your uniform?
Do you like dinosaurs, if so would you like to be a paleontologist?
Do you have a school uniform you have to wear?
Do you know the English alphabet?
What do you do in mathematics?
When do you stop for summer holidays?
What is your lucky number?
How hard is it to work with 50 people in your class?
How long is your normal school day?
What is your favourite subject?
Do you find using chop-sticks easy or hard?
How old are you?
This morning, Year 6 became immersed in their new Literacy unit – the Roman times. Over the new few weeks, we will be working towards writing an authentic tale of mystery and intrigue so we needed to research this exciting period in history.
Today, in literacy, Redwood Class have been exploring the features of a non-chronological report. Mrs Cooke cut up some pages from a book and we had to decide how to put them back together. Do you think we did a good job? 
Year 3 have had lots of fun today learning actions to help them retell the story of Goldilocks and the 3 Bears. 
Following the arrival of their special parcel yesterday, Team 2 have been exploring the features of a Traditional Tale – Goldilocks and the Three Bears. We have found adjectives, third person, past tense, time adverbials and lots of ISPACE! 
At the start of their new topic, Holes, year 6 have received a letter from Mr Minoia asking for their help to persuade the Public Health, Sanitation and Consumer Products Safety Group that the conditions at Camp Green Lake are unsatisfactory. Today, we have read our exemplar text and highlighted key features of a persuasive letter.
