Homework review (Creative)
I was really impressed with this week’s homework. Well done, everyone! To celebrate the monumental (ask your child what this word means – we came across it in our class novel this week) efforts from Y5 we took part in our first homework review of the year. We had the chance to see everyone’s responses and left comments in books to say well done.
Here are a few of our favourites…
And, here is our absolute favourite piece this week. Well done, Ben. Your model classroom was incredible. I love the attention to detail!
Hotseating
On Thursday, we wrote a diary entry as Henry from ‘The Incredible Book Eating Boy’. In order to get into character, we thought about what questions we’d like to ask Henry if he were real and then some of us took on his character, fabulously.
8Rs Creative Homework
A fabulous start to homework from Year 6. We enjoyed a wonderful presentation from both Edward and Aleena and saw a whole host of different ways we could us the 8Rs at home, at school and in extra curricular activities.
As always, we spent some time looking at each others’ before sharing a comment in everybody’s book.
Here are some we particularly liked:
From constellation art to Mr Fluffy – Year 3’s weekly round-up
This week, the children were extremely excited to make their monsters. As you can see from their facial expressions, they came up with some terrifying creatures! Challenge your child to describe their monster using interesting adjectives!
We discussed vocabulary and their impact upon readers with ‘shades of meaning’. Children worked in groups and talked about what each word meant and where an author might use it.
We had a go at acting out each word, from creeping to marching, from worried to petrified:
Great drama skills!
In maths, we have been working on missing number patterns, using detective skills to figure out which numbers complete the sequence. Not only have we been practising our 5s this week, but also counting in 50s with our ‘First to 1000’ game!
We used iPads and books to research the question: ‘What is a constellation?’, and presented our results back to the class…
We drew known constellations, but designed and named our own creations, too!
We have also been inspired to make some constellation art, using different paints and glitter. Hopefully we’ll have some clear evenings this weekend so you can go stargazing, something a lot of children have been very enthusiastic about. See if you can spot any of the constellations we’ve talked about this week!
Sadly, this week brings the end of our time with Orion and the Dark, but children have been writing their own version of the story. With some fantastically creative ideas from the class, we turned the story on its head and entitled ours ‘Orion and the Sun’. A boy who is afraid to go outside goes on an adventure with his new friend Sunny to find out if there’s more to life than his video games! I’m looking forward to reading the results!
A warm welcome to our new class pet, Mr Fluffy…
…who helped us discuss our Living and Learning theme for this week which was “I show I am ready to learn and I respond to feedback”. Congratulations to Jessica, who won this week’s Living and Learning certificate, for our brilliant conversations about her work and for always being one of the first ready to learn. Congratulations to Adam, this week’s Star of the Week, for his enthusiasm, contribution and all round hard work.
Another great week in Y3! Well done everyone!
Creative homeworks
Here’s a selection of our favourite creative homeworks from this week.
Story mapping
We’ve been planning our own story today based on our class novel, Lost and Found. Children have drawn pictures to represent what happens in the story. This will help them sequence the story when they write it tomorrow. 
PE – basketball
Yesterday, in PE, we practised our basketball skills. We focussed on our dribbling skills and played games that allowed us to improve our skills whilst working as a team. More importantly, we made sure we worked up a sweat and had fun!
Please remember that your child should have their PE kit in school every Tuesday and Wednesday (preferably every day). However, from next week onwards (for 4 weeks), PE will be on Monday and Wednesday. This is to accommodate a visitor.
What’s that coming over the hill?
Is it a monster?
Continuing on with our text focus, Orion and the Dark, we have had fun creating our own monsters.
First of all, the children were asked to describe their monster. Using different parts of the body we were able to create a bank of adjectives. Using these, the children went on to create some expanded noun phrases. Here is an example of how we set this work out.
- ears noun
- wrinkly ears adjective noun
- wrinkly, old ears adjective adjective noun
- wrinkly, old ears that can hear a pin drop extra detail
- My monster has wrinkly, old ears that can hear a pin drop. full sentence
Then, it was time to get creative. The children sketched their monsters first. After this, using clay, we set to work. Children had to select tools needed to make patterns, cut, flatten and decorate their models. When complete, the models were baked and are now on display in the classroom.
Below, are a few pictures of the children at work.
Skills
In our topic lessons, and other lessons, children have the opportunity to use many skills such as ICT, improving their own learning and performance, working with others and problem-solving.
Here the children are working with others and using their thinking skills to predict what their learning might be at the start of a topic lesson on seasons.
Ourselves in the style of Oliver Jeffers
Wow! I’ve been blown away by our fantastic art today. Over the last two weeks, we’ve been building on our existing art skills in order to prepare ourselves for this final piece (Learning Objective: To be able make images in the style of another artist).
Inspired by ‘The Incredible Book Eating Boy‘, we drew an illustrated version of ourselves in the style of Oliver Jeffers. Oliver Jeffers, who has illustrated lots of other books, has quite a unique style and we tried to replicate this in our pieces. For example, when studying a range of his work, we noticed that many of his characters have large, round heads. In the images below you can see that many children were able to replicate this in their drawings. Similarly, we noticed that his characters tend to have very spindly arms and legs; again, you can see this in the examples below.
Can you spot which one is Mr Catherall?
If reading this post with your child, help them practise their writing skills by asking them to point out all the fronted adverbials and relative clauses.