Autumn 1: Flooded (class text)

We are starting the year by reading Flooded written by Mariajo Ilustrajo.

Autumn 1: Marshmallows

This half term Miss Warwick’s guided Reading group will be using a short film clip to inspire writing. We will be watch short parts of the clip each week and completing lots of activities to help aid our comprehension skills.

Week 1

This week we have focused on descriptive writing. We started the week by playing ‘setting sleuths’, using our memory to note down nouns from the settings. We then used these to help us write some descriptive sentences on seesaw.

We ended the week by writing descriptive sentences with our partners. We worked really hard to add adjectives to our sentence which made the next part challenging……. We had to improve someone else’s already super sentence! 
 

We used word hippo to help us find new wow words and created amazing final sentences!

Summer 1 - Flotsam

Our book for this half term is very different to any of our other class texts this year because it doesn’t have any WORDS!

The book is about is about a bright, science-minded boy who goes to the beach equipped to collect and examine flotsam-anything floating that has been washed ashore. Bottles, lost toys, small objects of every description are among his usual finds. But there's no way he could have prepared for one particular discovery: a barnacle-encrusted underwater camera, with its own secrets to share . . . and to keep.

Investigating Beach Treasure

We worked in teams to investigate different items from the beach. The children were excited to find out that a ‘mermaids purse’ was actually a shark or skate egg case.

Exploring Illustrations and using inference

We worked within small groups to explore illustrations from the book. The illustrations were very unusual. We worked together to answer the following questions:

What do we know? (Evidence in the image)

What do we think we know? (Using inference)
What would we like to know? (Questions)

A photo within a photo

Our last photograph in the book was of a little girl holding a photograph. We thought this girl may be from another country because the weather looked warmer and the children thought the sea looked clearer like on tropical islands.

We used magnifying glasses to explore the photograph further and we found it was a photo of a girl holding a photo, of a boy holding a photo, of a girl holding a photo…… on and on. The photographs turned sepia so the children thought this suggested that the camera had been around a very long time!

There were some fantastic group discussions happening all around the room.

World Book Day 2024

We worked in mixed aged groups this year for our world book day activities. 
 

To start the day Crummock class went into Windermere class for paired reading.

Spring 2 - The Matchbox diary

Our story this half term is a heart warming tale about immigration.

When a little girl visits her great-grandfather, she asks him about his matchbox collection. Each matchbox contains a special item that has great meaning to her great-grandfather, although they may not look special to us. The items tell of his journey from Italy to a new country, before he could read or write. 
 

We are really looking forward to exploring this text in class.

Inference

We have been using our inference skills in class today to imagine what the characters in the story may be thinking as they arrive at New York.
 

The little boy (now the grandad in the story), his sisters and his mother have been travelling on the ship for 19 days. A trip that would take 5 hours on an aeroplane today! There was also a storm when they were at sea!

We sorted sentences into four different sentence types - questions, statements, commands and exclamations. We then used these ideas to create a talking tableaux. 
 

After using these ideas we created our own sentences for the characters in the image.

Our Matchbox memories
 

We brought in our own items from home which we felt we would use as our ‘matchstick memories’. We presented our items to others within small groups and then wrote about the significance of our objects. It was lovely to hear about all the memories of each of our pupils and also hear about some interesting hobbies and magical adventures.

I have only included images of some of our items on here because other collections included childhood photographs and personal details. We know from Kidsafe that we should never share details such our our address, name or family information online which is why these have not been shared on our website.

Spring 1

Our class book for this half term is Cinnamon by Neil Caiman. This book is a fabulous story which explores the difficulties faced by a blind Indian princess.

We used our senses to explore items in feely bags before trying to describe the items to the rest of our table through actions! We all found the task quite tricky and there were lots of funny guesses!

Character Limericks

We worked with a partner to write our own limericks about characters in the story. We used rhyming dictionaries to help you think of rhymes. Take a look at some of them below 🐅🦜👩🏽

Guided Reading - Autumn
 

This term we are looking at a poetry anthology written by our Author of the term, Robert Mcfarlane.

This book contains poems about different animals native to the UK. We will be completing different activities to help us understand the poems and engaging in group discussions.

Autumn 2 - The Tin Forest

Our first book for this half term is The Tin Forest by Helen Ward and Wayne Anderson.

Descriptive writing

We worked within table groups to write descriptive sentences using adjectives.

Wishes for the lonely, old man

This week we have been writing in role as the character in the book. The man in the book lives in a windswept area and is very lonely. He built a tin forest by recycling the rubbish that had been dumped in the area. One day a real toucan came to his tin forest but sadly left again. 
 

‘That night, by moonlight, he made a wish….’

Take a look at the wishes we wrote in role:

Class Litter pick - 10th November 

The tin forest is all about recycling and looking after you local environment . We decided that it would be a good idea to have a litter pick within our village so we could see if litter was an issue. Sadly we found lots of rubbish in the village, with majority of the rubbish found in the Playpark.

Next week we will be writing a piece of persuasive writing to encourage residents to look after the village of Oughterside. You might even spot some of our writing in to the next Parish Council Newsletter!

Celebrating Black History Month - 19th October 2023

Crummock class produced worked with a partner to create fantastic information sheets about John Kent. John Kent was the first black police man in Britain. He started his career as a watchman in Maryport in 1835 before joining Carlisle City Police in 1837.

Performance Poetry

Crummock class worked in small teams to organise a performance of a few lines from Snow by Walter de la Mare. Each team ensured everyone was included and it was fantastic to hear them considering one another’s ideas. They performed in-front of their peers.

Autumn 1 Handwriting Competition 

It was extremely difficult to chose our winner this half term. All of our pupils have worked so hard to improve their handwriting this half term and I wish I could have made everyone a winner!

Autumn 1 - The Varmints

Our first book for this half term is The Varmints. We have already started exploring the book, using adjectives and personification to describe the contracting scenes. We have also produced some artwork linked to the book. Keep an eye on this page for updates and work examples.

Changes Poem - 27th September

We have been exploring different figurative devices in class this week such as similes, metaphors and even personification. As the book Varmints is all about change, we decided to write our our poem about change using figurative language. Take a look at the examples below.

Summer 2 - The story of Tutankhamun

Our book this half term links with our history topic of Egyptians.

Summer 1

Our first book this half term is ‘Pride’. This is the very first picture book about the remarkable and inspiring story of the Gay Pride Flag! During the text we will trace the life of the Gay Pride Flag, from its beginnings in 1978 with social activist Harvey Milk and designer Gilbert Baker to its spanning of the globe and its role in today's world.
 

Spring 2 - Cloud Tea Monkeys by Mal Pete and Elspeth Graham

This half term we are reading Cloud Tea Monkeys. The book tells the story of Tashi who lives in India. When her mother falls ill, she has to take on her mothers job and pick tea to pay for the doctor. It gives a great insight into life in other parts of the world.

On our first day back in school, Crummock class had been taken over by Miss Teacup! She thought that the class had turned up for her tea tasting apprenticeship workshop so everyone tried four different herbal teas. We used our sense of smell and taste to try and find out the flavours of each tea. We also wrote some descriptions to help Miss Teacup advise customers about the different teas that she sold in her shop. 

Performance Poetry

This half term we have enjoyed reading a book called The Mermaid of Zennor. We found out that the book was based on a Cornish folklore from the town of Zennor. A boy had gone missing in the town and was believed to have gone to live with the mermaids!

We decided to research the town of Zennor and created our own persuasive leaflets using the Ipads. Have a read and see if they persuade you to visit! 

Look at our fantastic handwriting! Miss Warwick found it really difficult to choose our class winner this half term but eventually decided to choose Lucy.

Well done Lucy! Keep it up!