Year 3 - English-Year 3 Inspired by Author and Quizmaster Jay Flynn
Today, Year 3 enjoyed an inspiring visit from the author and celebrated Quizmaster, Jay Flynn. As part of their Biographies topic, Jay shared fascinating insights into his writing process and the content of his autobiography. He offered valuable tips to the young writers on how to craft compelling narratives, emphasising a great opening to draw readers in. The children were particularly enthralled to hear about Jay's own adventures, his significant charity work, and even his meeting with Prince William. This experience has ignited their enthusiasm as they now prepare to write their own biographies about the David Attenborough. Thank you so much Jay and thank you to Jack for telling his Dad all about our Biographies topic, leading to this special visit!
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Year 3- English- Generating questions for research
As part of our biographies topic, year three have been developing their research skills by generating questions about a famous celebrity. They then interviewed their friends to see if they could discover the answers using the text.
Year 4 - Big Lent Walk to the Rose Garden
Yesterday, the Year 4s took advantage of the lovely weather and completed a Big Lent Walk to the Rose Garden at Whitehall Park. Whilst there, we spent time exploring the selection of artwork and poetry shared by each class. We helped the Reception children read the poetry and completed challenges to find each part of the Easter story.
Year 1- Big Lent Walk
This morning, Year 1 walked 7.5km each, totalling a huge 225km as a collective. They did this by walking into Darwen Town Centre to take pictures of some of our well known landmarks in preparation for their art unit next half-term. This included India Mill, Darwen Post Office, Darwen Leisure Centre, Darwen Market Hall and Darwen Library. We extended our stay at Darwen Library by going inside to enjoy a lovely story. Finally, we came back to school to write a recount of our walk. We had to make sure that we were capitalising proper nouns (including the names of people, places and street names) as this is the grammar skill that we we have been working hard on over the last couple of weeks.
Year 1 English- Capitalising Proper Nouns
This week in Year 1, our grammar focus has been to capitalise proper nouns. We have focused on capitalising the names of people, places, days of the week and months of the year in preparation for writing a recount. We have been using our microphones to encourage us to speak loudly and clearly as we orally repeat and/or construct sentences. We have also been using our Kung Fu Punctuation to support us with punctuating our sentences correctly.
Reception, Year 1 and Year 2- Story Club with Miss Flynn and the Librarians
Today in story club, Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 listened to the story of ‘The Smartest Giant in Town’ with Miss Flynn and the librarians. They thought about why the giant went from being the smartest giant in town to the kindest giant in town because of his generosity to all of the animals who were upset in the story. We then finished with a craft where the children made a crown (like the one that the animals made for the giant) and thought about how they can also show kindness and generosity.
Year 2 - Identifying features of a diary
In English, year 2 continued to read and explore different diary entries. We read lots of different diaries and identified their features. We looked for: date, dear diary, first person (I), past tense and any thoughts or feelings. The children were able to find lots of these features independently. Knowing all of these features must be in a diary will help us to write excellent diary entries next week.
Year 6 English - Non Chronological Reports
In English, Year 6 have begun a new unit on non-chronological reports. They watched a video about a sports journalist, who explained the key features of the reports that she writes. The children then had to identify and annotate those key features in an example text. We also looked at relative clauses and “Kung Fu Punctuation” in our grammar session.
Year 5 English - “The Invention of Hugo Cabret”
In English, year 5 have been looking at the text “The Invention of Hugo Cabret.” They have been doing lots of partner work and class discussions, sharing ideas for writing. The focus has been fronted adverbials with -ing openers to describe settings and characters. We can see already that the children’s independent writing for this unit is going to be fantastic!
Year 3- English- Semantic Mapping
Today, the children began their new unit by working in small groups to create semantic maps for the word biography. They explored synonyms, defined the term, identified key events to include, and discussed people they could write about. This collaborative activity helped them develop a deeper understanding of what makes a compelling biography. Over the coming weeks, they will build on this as they work towards writing a biography on David Attenborough.
Year 6 English - Writing
Year 6 have been planning and writing an alternative story opening, based on their example text: “Goodnight, Mister Tom.” The children have been focusing on using expanded noun phrases and figurative language to describe the settings and characters, in order to build a detailed picture in the mind of the reader.
Year 4 - English: Easter Poetry
This week, we began our poetry unit in English. Our topic is the Easter story, with our aim being to produce a piece of poetry, some of which will be displayed in the rose garden at Whitehall Park. We are only in the first stages at the moment; exploring poetry and working on our performance skills, but we had great fun creating and performing Kennings about Judas.