Literacy | St Joseph's Catholic Primary School

Literacy

Learning about statements, questions and commands

Croc and Bird

This week the whole school have been taking part in activities based on our Power of Pictures book, 'Croc and Bird' by Alexis Deacon. Please click here to see what we have been getting up to!

Seasons Sonnet

Class 1 blew Mrs Holliday's socks off with their fabulous literacy work on Sonnets! As part of Science Week we have been learning about the seasons of the year and have written different types of poetry to reflect our learning. For this poem, we learned to identify the rhythm, rhyme and syllable pattern of a sonnet. We then worked in pairs to create one line of our poem. We hope you like it!

Seasons Sonnet.pdf

The Lonely Beast

Miss Taylor has been helping us to learn about The Lonely Beast, written by Chris Judge. We have used the story to explore character descriptions and we have written diary entries from the Beast's perspective. We took on the roles of concerned residents and MPs to debate whether the Beast should be allowed to stay in the park or whether he should be sent away. We practised our note taking, reasoning and speaking skills to justify our views.

In the end, the ayes had it and the Beast was allowed to stay. Hooray!

Lonely Beast Debate.mp4

Becoming Dragon Spotters

We had a special guest this week - Dudley the Dragon Spotter! He gave us lots of tips about how to spot friendly dragons. We searched around the school and found evidence of dragon activity, including a glitter trail leading to a very special nest! We are now using our research to create a non-chronological report about the dragon we think we have found.

There's some sky in this pie

We have been reading stories from A Necklace of Raindrops as part of our fiction unit. This week we read 'There's some sky in this pie.' We joined in with the rhyme and repetition of the story and freeze-framed each part. Later, we created and sequenced storyboards, acted out a role play of the story and even made some delicious apple pies! Take a look at our photos below.

Instructions

We have been learning about instructions. We even wrote our own recipe for jam tarts and enjoyed baking them last week. This week we have been practising our speaking and listening by taking part in verbal instruction activities. We played barrier games with our partners to create a colour picture, arrange cubes to match our designs and to replicate our partner pictures. We even had to explain to Alien Mrs Holliday (who had landed in a spaceship in the playground) how to light a candle using clear instructions!

New: Our own sound collector poems

We have been studying The Sound Collector by Roger McGough (scroll down to hear our audio version of the poem). This week we worked in groups to create our own sound poems based on pictures of different scenes. Please click below to see our pictures and to hear our poems. We worked very hard on them!

Audio Poem - The Sound Collector

We have been studying Roger McGough's The Sound Collector. A group of children learned and performed the poem, thinking carefully about what sounds we would hear in a house. Here's the original poem and a link to our version:

sound collector soundtrack.MP3

The Sound Collector

A stranger called this morning
Dressed all in black and grey
Put every sound into a bag
And carried them away

The whistling of the kettle
The turning of the lock
The purring of the kitten
The ticking of the clock

The popping of the toaster
The crunching of the flakes
When you spread the marmalade
The scraping noise it makes

The hissing of the frying pan
The ticking of the grill
The bubbling of the bathtub
As it starts to fill

The drumming of the raindrops
On the windowpane
When you do the washing-up
The gurgle of the drain

The crying of the baby
The squeaking of the chair
The swishing of the curtain
The creaking of the stair

A stranger called this morning
He didn't leave his name
Left us only silence
Life will never be the same

Roger McGough

Apple Fun

In our story The Magic Finger, we read about how the Gregg family grew wings instead of arms and had to try to eat apples with no hands. To prepare ourselves for writing a diary in role, we had a go too!

Our Sensory Poem

This week we have learned that the characters in our story grow duck wings instead of arms. They use their wings to fly up over the farm. We have learned about the 5 senses in our topic book and worked as a class to create a sensory poem of what the characters might be able to see, hear, smell and feel. Please click the link below to read our amazing poem!

Our Sensory Poem.pdf

'The Magic Finger' Role Play

This week we practised using our faces and body language to show how characters would feel at different points in the story. We had some very convincing performances!