Michael Faraday Primary School » literacy

Nursery Gruffalo Learning

MF — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 12:37:52 +0000

The Nursery children have been having great fun with our new class-reading book of The Gruffalo. We have introduced the different characters, and then played many games, all based around the book. This is a wonderful story in which to use role-play to explore how the animals are all feeling. The Nursery children have made masks for all the different characters to help us out with our acting. The story has excited us so much that we are planning our own Nursery Gruffalo Hunt! We will be taking all the children out to nearby Dulwich Woods on 2nd February, to see if we can find the South London Gruffalo. All parents are welcome to join us on this trip.

The animal magic has also continued in the Nursery with a visit from Paul the Python Man! As the name suggests, our friend Paul brought in his wonderful python to help the children learn more about different kinds of animals. We were also able to see a tarantula spider and a lizard. Our work themed around animals and The Gruffalo will continue over future weeks. We will be using animals in our maths work, playing games such as counting the number of spots on a snake.

Reception Reading

MF — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 12:34:00 +0000

We are continuing reading in Reception our current class book of Aaaarrgghh Spider! This is a story that has fascinated the children, as they learn all about how spiders live and why they are able to weave webs. It has inspired us to make our own Reception webs, using glitter, weaving and even a huge human web! The story is introducing the children to many new words and helping us with our spelling.

The Reception children are also starting to learn about the traditional Chinese New Year story, and how this is celebrated each year in China. We are expecting to receive in the post quite soon a very special letter sent from China, telling us all about this special time of the year.

Year 1 Fairytales

MF — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 12:31:02 +0000

Year 1 have been learning about fairytales to help us with our literacy work. All of the children are incredibly familiar with the story of Little Red Riding Hood, and so we decided to create our own Year 1 character – Little Blue Riding Hood! We decided that we wanted to make our fairytale have a slight twist from the original. We decided as a class that Little Blue Riding Hood needed to be smarter in order not to be caught out by the Big Bad Wolf. The children have been writing their own stories to help to explain this. We have heard some fantastic ideas – Little Blue Riding Hood feeds the Big Bad Wolf some chewing gum so that his teeth stick together! Another idea was that Little Blue Riding Hood is given a scooter so that she can escape. As well as writing out our stories, the children have also some made Little Blue Riding Hood puppets to help them act out their ideas.

Year 3 Poetry Video

MF — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 21:03:37 +0000

We have been combining our literacy with drama and music in Year 3 for the start of the new school year. The children have been reading the poem The Iron Man by Ted Hughes. This is a very descriptive piece that allows the reader to think of many different sounds and images. Having studied the poem in great detail, Year 3 then came up with some ideas as to how the poem might sound if there was no words. We wanted to come up with sounds that might be substituted for the many adjectives that can be found in the piece. We first started off using no instruments, part from our own voices and imagination. We then progressed to adding in some percussion. As you can see from both videos below, Year 3 have been able to put across the images found in The Iron Man through the use of sound.

Year 2 Poetry Podcast

MF — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 16:43:01 +0000

Year 2 have been greatly enjoying exploring the work of Jeanne Willis, our current class author of the month. Having read and produced some work based on Misery Moo, we have now moved on to look at the Rascal Cake book. This is a story that involves many gruesome cooking recipes!

We set the children the task to come up with a list sentence based on the book. This style of writing helps our literacy work to come alive, rather than just stating single fact sentences. Each pupil came up with a disgusting rascal cake ingredient. We then drew these out of an envelope to help us come up with a description for our rascal cake monsters that we are going to display. You can listen to a selection of these being read out in the podcast below.

Y2 monster poems (mp3)

Year 4 Literacy

MF — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 16:38:57 +0000

Year 4 have been exploring more about the fascinating character of the Jabberwocky. He first appears in Alice in Wonderland, as well as a number of poems based upon his actions. Year 4 have been reading these, and then gaining inspiration for our own literacy work.

We have been looking at how to write a balanced news report, and how this might differ from any other form of writing. Using the Jabberwocky as our main news feature, Year 4 have written a news account based on the poems. We then used out ICT time to publish these in a newspaper style, thinking about headlines, paragraphs and where to put pictures.

Year 6 Autobiographies

MF — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 16:35:23 +0000

Year 6 have been learning all about autobiographies during our literacy lessons. We have found out that this is a form of writing that is produced by ourselves, containing information all about our lives and memories. We started off our work writing short autobiographical poems. We wanted the pupils to consider some of the major moments in their lives to date.

We have continued this work by writing some very detailed full autobiographical account of our lives. To give our writing some structure, we asked the pupils to focus upon particular themes. These included hobbies, achievements and inspirations. We soon found that these often overlapped – our hobbies have lead to achievements, which have then inspired us further.

You can listen to a snapshot of these Year 6 autobiographical accounts being read out in the podcast below.

Y6 autobiographies (mp3)

Nursey Swahili Singing!

MF — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 09:54:31 +0000

Handa’s Surprise has been keeping us all very happy in the Michael Faraday Nursery! This is a wonderful book for the young children to explore as it contains so many themes that are relevant to our teaching across the curriculum. We have used the book to talk about different languages that we might speak at home. A Swahili song has also been sung in class – you can sing-along by watching the video below!

Elsewhere in the Nursery and Handa’s Surprise has also inspired out artwork. We having been creating some paint prints of fruits and animals that we have come across in the story. We have also used the story to talk with the children about the importance of friendship – another theme that we have found in the book.