We did PP1 today, where we started to look at our non chronological report. We have started with a subheading and a little introduction about Maya
Writing
Category : Writing
Grammar in MI
Today we explored emotive language and rhetorical questions, two key features we need to use when writing our persuasive letters. First we watched a clip exploring emotive language. We were given a range of pictures where we showed the emotion we felt. There was many laughs and giggles for some of these! We then discussed why writers use emotive language and the impact on the reader. Next we were given a range of language, we had to group the words under 4 headings- happy, excited, sad and angry. We worked in mini crews to discuss each word finding the synonyms. We then shared these back with the whole crew. Next we explored different scenarios where we discussed how the scenarios made us feel and which words were emotive.
We then moved onto rhetorical questions where we thought about the sections of our letter and where rhetorical questions could go. We used a range of sentence starters to help us build our own rhetorical questions in mini crews then shared these back with the whole crew. Our debrief allowed us to discuss how the rhetorical questions make us feel and the impact they will have on Mrs Atherton when she reads our persuasive letters!
Writing/ Experience day
Today in writing we had our experience day looking at a non chronological report . The children noticed that the report can go in any order .We also used google to find out facts about the Maya people.
Experience day lesson continues in MI
Today we continued with our experience day lesson from yesterday! We will be writing a persuasive letter to Mrs Atherton to ask her if we can become beekeepers! We recapped our learning from yesterday discussing emotive language, flattery and alliteration. We had another look at some of the ideas on our anchor chart where we described Mrs Atherton! We can’t wait to add these to our persuasive letters when we come to write them.
Today we thought about why crew MI are so amazing and how we can show we are. We worked in mini crews to build ideas then produced a class anchor chart. We then looked at a variety of video clips building background knowledge on the benefits of bees and why beekeeping is important. We build ideas in mini crews then as a whole crew. We then used our ideas and put them into some sentences. We are really enjoying our new writing unit 🙂
Reading/Experience
In writing, we have used the time as a reading lesson because if we are to write a non chronological report we need to ensure we have the information.
Find the Shape
Our next writing consisted of starting to unpick the model and look at examples of a non chronological report. We started off the lesson with a silent conversation where we had an opportunity to unpick the features of the model that had been completed for them. Children were good at identifying fronted adverbials, conjunctions, rhetorical questions and subject specific vocabulary.
Next they worked alongside their partner to unpick some double page spreads that are similar to what they will be producing at the end of this piece of writing. We saw some lovely collaboration between the pairs in crew. Once we were happy, we’d picked all the features out, we created a checklist that we’ll use when we write our own plot points.
Experience Lesson – Information Gathering
Today in writing, Crew Hamill gathered as much information as possible about Ancient Maya in order to have the facts we need for our double-page, non-chronological reports. We watched several videos that were full of interesting and detailed facts about the Maya civilisation and then used picture and word prompts to detail these notes, ready for our writing lessons. We found out lots that we were able to add to the knowledge we already had after our history case study. We’re going to come together to chot down as much as possible in our next lesson so that we have plenty to include in our reports.
Grammar – Non Chronological report
In our grammar lesson, we’ve really been honing in on the appropriate fronted adverbials and conjunctions you’d use within a non chronological report. We spent some time thinking about how we could link facts using fronted adverbials and which ones would best fit into the sentence. We also looked at models of a fiction and non fictions piece of writing so we could see the difference between the two. Finally we worked alongside our partner to start putting facts about the Mayans into sentences using appropriate fronted adverbials.
Find the shape – non-chronological reports
In today’s writing lesson, Crew Hamill began with a silent conversation in which we walked around the classroom looking at chunks of our model text, making a note of things we noticed, any features we could find and any fronted adverbials we could spot. We were able to identify some key features of a non-chronological report, such as paragraphs, subheadings and fronted adverbials. Following this, we looked at some example double-page spread reports and worked in mini crews to annotate them with praises and notices. We then came together as a crew and shared these. We were able to use these to generate a checklist of non-negotiables that we are going to use when writing our own non-chronological reports. This list included things like neat, cursive handwriting and accurate, detailed drawings.
Applying editing and redrafting
After having some time to edit and redraft other people’s work, it was time to apply these skills to our own work. We were given time to start working through our plot point so we could uplevel it. This is a skill we’ve been working hard on this year and still find it a little tricky especially as we feel we did a good job the first time round. However, we know there is always room for improvement.
