In grammar this afternoon, we looked at why headings and subheadings are used in nonfiction texts. We discussed how headings are used to tell you what the page is about and subheadings are used to tell you what the paragraph will be about. We then had a go at matching the paragraph to the correct subheading.
We worked in mini crews to put chunks of sentences together in order to create full sentences that included a subordinate clause (a clause that does not make sense on its own). The sentences we created were:
We discussed which part of these sentences was the main clause and which part was the subordinate. We also discussed whether our sentences could be put in a different order and still make sense.
Today we made bananas for our experience lesson, when Handa started walking to her friend Akeyo she walked past a tall tree which had a cheeky monkey in it, who pinched Handa’s bananana!!
We tried really hard at balancing our banana on our head just like Handa does. Look at our balancing!
We started our new writing unit today which will be a narrative based around the film Ice Age. The last narrative we completed was our best piece of writing so we’re excited to get started.
After watching the video, we worked together in mini crews to sequence the events. Then we spent some time chatting notices, feelings and actions.
In our writing lesson today, we focussed on grammar which we will need in our narrative writing about The Ice Age. Our focus today was subordinate clauses but before we could look at these we looked at the difference between an independent clause and a dependent main clause. We learnt that an independent clause makes sense on its own and dependent clauses do not make sense by themselves and need a main clause to make sense. We then spotted how a subordinate clause can be at the start or end of a sentence. Then we had a go at piecing together some sentences whilst identifying the main clause and subordinate clause. We really enjoyed the extra challenge, where all the words were chopped up separately. We are so excited to try to include these in our writing. 😀✏️
Today, Crew Hamill began exploring their new writing unit that is focused on a clip from the film Ice Age. We began by looking at snapshots from the film and discussing notices, feelings and wonders that we had from them. After this, we watched the section of the clip that we are going to retell in a narrative and then ordered the snapshots from the clip to help us verbally retell the story.
In grammar, Crew Hamill learned all about determiners. To begin our lesson, we discussed the difference between vowels and consonants and identified this in mini crews. This helped us to decide which determiner to use before each of our vowels. We learned that if the word begins with a vowel (a, e, i, o, u) then we must use an as a determiner and if it begins with a consonant (any of the other 21 letters) we must use a. We also learned about exceptions to this rule – e.g. hour. Even though this starts with a consonant, it actually makes a vowel sound so we would have to use an.
Today we discussed and explored the present perfect tense and the simple past tense.
This week is our grammar focus morning tasks. We used this time to consolidate previous learning.
Today we started our independent plot point of our diary entry. We re watched part of the clip so we could really think about the characters feelings and empathise with him. We chotted different pieces of language to describe Mowgli’s feelings then built a bank of similes around these. We also thought of some of the openers and adverbials that may be appropriate for this plot point. Children then started to write their plot point, applying all the features they had used previously. As I always say to them, it is their time to shine! And this is what they did. A great start to their independent write. I can’t wait to read the next part.
