Here We Are

Today we started our whole school book – Here We Are by Oliver Jeffers. We started by reading the book together and then, in teams, we thought of everything that we can find on Earth. What a great start to the new term.

Dual Narratives in Y6

Rainy Day Exploration

We enjoyed creating stepping stones for the rain today and watching what happens when we drew in the puddles.

Editing Stations

Year 4 have finished their persuasive letters and spent today’s lesson editing their work. We rotated around various editing stations to ensure we focused on one feature at a time. The children were able to spot mistakes a lot easier in this way.📖✏️🔎

A Dual Narrative this week in Y6

We have been working on writing our own dual narrative this week. We have done lots of pre-writing work, now we have begun writing our own stories using two characters from Hansel and Gretel.

Preparing for writing

Year 6 spent some time yesterday finding out what a dual narrative is: we read an example and identified language and organisational features of the text, We then used our oracy skills to hot seat characters to gain a deeper understanding of emotions, actions and motivation. During our role on the wall work, we came up with some truly mind-blowing words!

Writing a persuasive letter of support

Year 6 have thoroughly enjoyed this writing activity linked to Hansel and Gretel. We wrote a persuasive letter / a letter of support telling our friends Hansel and Gretel reasons why they should not go into the old woman’s cottage.

Reading Pictures

We are reading Into the Forest by Anthony Browne. The children are enjoying looking at his fantastic illustrations and seeing what they can spot. The pictures tell the story and keep us guessing about what happens next.

Personification!

We have used today to compile a list of words that personify the sun – both human actions and emotions. We started constructing sentences with these words so we were ready for our next lesson.

Script writing and performing

We have written scripts for two characters in our book. We have used our inference skills to create a conversation that might have happened between them. Then we had some children perform their scripts to the class.

Remembrance poetry

To think about those who have lost their lives, we created some rhyming poetry. We based our poems on poppy fields, just like our art work.

Writing in role

Year 6 really enjoyed writing in the role of a character today, we could use some some words we would never normally say as they are not polite! Writing is based on the woodcutter’s wife’s reaction to the children finding their way home after her husband took them deep into the forest to lose them! She is not a happy lady!

Art and feelings

Starting our new book, we met a character that loves the sun light stroking her skin as she dances. We used this image to create our own to show how the sun makes the girl feel.

Planning time

We are planning our instructions for how the Ancient Egyptians would have mummified a body to preserve it.

Session 4- Parent Literacy Workshop

Thanks to all parents for coming along to session 4 of our parental literacy workshop which focused on writing.Please join us on Wednesday 22nd October for our final literacy workshop. The time will be 2.15-3pm. Many thanks.

Egg Box Dragon Kenning Poems

We worked so hard to create a kenning poem. We thought about what we know about Egg Box Dragon and used our knowledge of the suffix -er too. I am very proud of you all, good job!

Year 2 English

Year 2 had a lovely afternoon creating a Kenning poem using the suffix er.

Writing in role

Year 6 have been taking on the role of Rose Blanche in English and have written a diary extract from her point of view.

Working Together

We have had a wonderful start to the school year. It is lovely to see the children working hard and helping each other. We have also used our home languages to help our friends who are new to English.

Prepositions

We looked at prepositions today, focusing what we could change in our sentence accuracy. Some great examples!

Marcy and her emotions

We have been exploring our new character’s feelings and how they have changed through the book. Marcy started off excited for an adventure but quickly changed to fear and worry when it went dark and she reached the cave.

Writing in role

Year 6 have been writing in role this week and today they took on the role of a friend, giving advice to Rose Blanche  after she told us what she had seen in the forest.

The Layers of the Amazon Rainforest

Today, we learned about the four layers of the Amazon Rainforest: the emergent layer, the canopy, the understory and the forest floor. These children worked very hard and produced wonderful work. Well done!

Leon and the Place Between

In English, we read the story Leon and the Place Between by Grahame Baker-Smith. One of our activities was to create a poster for the circus.

Handwriting Improvement

This hard-working boy has been practising his handwriting. He has made big improvements and is determined to get even better. Well done!

Substitution Tables For Writing

This boy created sentences about the story The Emperor’s New Clothes. A substitution table helped provide support to write different types of sentences. This story contains themes such as vanity and greed as well as humour. We’ve enjoyed reading it together.

Rumpelstiltskin

We have been reading the story of Rumpelstiltskin. It is an old German fairy tale that was written many years ago. These children have worked so hard with their writing. I have been very impressed.

Year 1 had a visit from a police officer to help investigate what happened to our classroom. He needed our help to find out who did it!

We made some predictions and thought about what happened in our class and who might have done it.

Year 1 walked into a surprise this morning! Someone had been in our classrooms and made a big mess!

Synonyms

This morning we focused on synonyms for the 6 words we have been looking at in Jemmy Button – voyage, magnificent, civilised, year, gazed and savages. We then recorded the best alternative words to use in our future work.

Writing in the role of a character.

We took on the role of one of the characters in the short story we are currently reading: Mad Miss Marney. We assumed the role of Kate after her first visit to Mad Miss Marney’s house.

Newspaper report writing

After completing a narrative, we have now written newspaper reports based on events within the short animation we based our narrative on: Francis.

Year 4 English

We worked hard to plan and write a non-chronological report. We worked in groups to write a specific paragraph.

Writing in Ms Siddiqui’s Group

These children have worked so hard today on their independent writing. Well done!

Biography writing in Year 6

We have been intrigued learning about Miep Gies and the role she played in helping to hide eight Jewish people in an annexe in Amsterdam during World War II but perhaps more importantly, how she was the one who found and kept safe Anne Frank’s diary.

We Won! Well, the suffragettes did!

Reaching the end of our unit, we learnt how the voting situation changed for women. Those courageous ladies achieved their aim and helped shape society today.

Planning before we write

Working together to gather ideas before planning our own independent write, based on our novel Pea Boy. ✍️📖

What could our new story be about?

We discovered some clues to our new story today! We made predictions and discussed if the clues reminded us of any other stories too.

Pre-writing task today

Before we begin writing our own diary extracts, we read and annotated a model text for language  and organisational features.

Conscience alley role play

We used role play to decide if the witch from our class text should give back the stolen happy endings. We thought of lots of reasons for and against.

Christmas card inserts

This week, the children have loved writing Christmas Card inserts to their families. They enjoyed practicing their early writing skills using the knowledge they have gained. This afternoon, they are excited to begin designing their cards…I am excited to see their creativity!

Calligraphy with the Arabic alphabet

Today in our art lesson we looked at different examples of Arabic calligraphy and have had a go at our own.

Transatlantic slave trade

Today we looked at different pictures of artefacts in museums around the world and how they were used during the transatlantic slave trade. We discussed the life of an enslaved person and the hardships they faced.

Dual Narratives

We really enjoyed writing these dual narratives in Year 6, we used two characters from the book we read together in lessons. We hope you enjoy reading them.

Celebrating differences 🌎

For our PSHE lesson we are celebrating differences. In previous weeks we have spoken about racism, bullying and rumours and now we are researching a range of countries and what their culture looks like.

Extra work at home!

Some incredible examples of extra work done at home. I have loved seeing how passionate we are about negative numbers, Olaudah Equiano and Roman numeral – keep it up, we love proudly displaying your work!

Year 4 English

This week we are writing our own twisted tale narrative. We spent this morning exploring what a good one looks like, locating features and writing our own alternative ending.

Dual narrative openings.

We have just started work on writing our own dual narratives, based on the characters and events in Neil Gaiman’s Hansel and Gretel. Such powerful openings! We can’t wait to get writing more, they will be incredible to read.

English Role Play

Year 4 had a fun creative morning today. They loved playing the witch and Jub. We also used macaroni to add inverted commas into our speech that we had acted out.

English drama activity

Year 4 had a fun morning creating speech and acting it out. We loved being the villainous witch and sweet, little Jub. We used macaroni to add inverted commas to our speech.

Charles Darwin

In Science, Year 6 have been learning about Charles Darwin as part of their ‘Evolution and Inheritance’ unit. Look at this incredible writing they have produced!

Solar Panel Persuasive Leaflets

After learning about renewable energy sources, we have just begun to produce our own persuasive / information leaflets about solar power.

What a great first attempt at a twisted narrative! 👏✏️

An author has come to Smithdown!

Author of ‘The late crew’ Rob Ferguson came to visit our school today. Some of us were so excited to even get our books signed by a real life author! We even designed our own alien that we could use in our stories.  

Incredible writing from Year 6

We are simply blown away by the writing we have recently produced. Our Year 6 classes are so invested in world issues – saving habitats and animals in particular. Have a read of some of the letters we wrote to the Rwandan Government, asking them to help protect the magnificent mountain gorillas 🦍

Amazing Writing

Wow. Look at this writing from reception children. How amazing!

Amazing Work on Renewable Energy Sources

In Geography, we have been finding out about renewable energy sources: why they are needed alongwith the advantages and disadvantages of each.

I made my work soooo much better 🌟 ✍️

I used fronted adverbials, conjunctions, subordinating conjunctions and personification. ⭐️🥳

Palm Oil – Positives and Negatives

We simply had to share a few more pieces of work as we think they are truly fantastic! Detailed information which is extremely well presented. Great work Year 6!

Explanation Texts

After researching mountain gorillas and adaptions of animals, we have just begun to write our own explanation texts. Keep an eye out for the finished pieces.

Using a combination of skills today…

In Year 6 today, we combined our learning from Geography and English by using our computer skills to present the information we have discovered into Google Sites to create our own web pages.

How to truly be a mischievous child 🤭🤫

Year 3 had a great start to their first shared write of the year. We have been learning about imperative verbs, rhetorical questions, adverbs and how instructions are laid out. We put all the new skills we have been learning to the test and used them to create a set of instructions about how to be a mischievous child, based on our reading book ‘Seen and Not Heard’

Parents watch out! Your children came up with some very interesting ideas!

Making sandwiches for Anna and Crocodile

Anna and Crocodile asked us for our help today. We thought about how to make a sandwich, created some plans, made some sandwiches and of course had to taste test them! Yum yum!

Making sandwiches for Anna and Crocodile

Anna and Crocodile are trying to make a sandwich. We wrote our first set of instructions and then made a sandwich to check we had included all the steps. We learned that a set of instructions needs a ‘What you need’ list and a Method.

Noun or Verb?

We went on a noun hunt and then acted out verbs to help us to identify the difference between the two.

Making maps

Today we made our own maps in preparation for our instruction texts. We had to think carefully about where the gold was hidden and then give our partner instructions to find it.

Retelling Lila and the Secret of Rain

We retold the story in teams and performed the story to our friends.

Asda

This morning we have had lots of fun playing in our Asda supermarket. We have been writing shopping lists and paying for our food with money.

Hansel and Gretel mural display completed.

How fabulous is this wall? !

Hansel and Gretel: Dual Narratives

We have thoroughly enjoyed reading Neil Gaiman’s version of Hansel and Gretel, so much so, it led us to writing our own dual narratives. We are so proud of the writing we have produced.

Using historical sources

We read some accounts of evacuation during WW2, comparing content and explaining what information and evidence each source provided.

Today we have read I Like Trains!

We have printed trains with blocks and made marks to represent train track, trains and signals.

We have been busy learning about Diwali the festival of light. We have moulded dough into Diya lamps. Made marks to create Rangoli patterns and wrote our names in our cards we have decorated.

Remembrance Day

We have created some beautiful poems after reading Flanders Fields and used watercolours/charcoal/pencils to create some poppy artwork to mark Remembrance Day.

So informative and so incredibly well presented

How AMAZING is this piece of work informing us about the consequences of palm oil! ? So informative and so incredibly well presented. #smithdowngeog #smithdownwriters

This is a test post for the Writing category

This morning we started to research @maejemison and tomorrow we will start our biographies of her life! #smithdownwriters