KS2 Author Visit
Yesterday, the children in KS2 were lucky enough to have a visit from Richard Alker. Richard is the author of the book ‘My Grandad vs the Fangazoo’. The children were truly immersed in his session and had many questions to ask Richard about his life and how he became an author. During the session, he discussed various things: what inspired him to write, character development, simple strategies he uses when writing and finally the children had the chance to listen to a book reading. Thank you Richard!
KS2- Author Visit-R.K. Alker
To celebrate World Book Day and foster a love for reading, we welcomed children's book author RK Alker today. He shared insights into his journey before becoming an author, recounting experiences such as growing chillies and collaborating with celebrities like Gordon Ramsay. Before pursuing writing, RK worked as an ambulance man until a leg injury led him to reconsider his career path. Inspired by his daughters, he fulfilled his lifelong dream of writing a book. During his talk, RK emphasised the importance of creative writing prompts and utilising the five senses to enhance writing. He introduced the children to his character Stretch the Dragon by reading chapter 7 from his current best-selling book 'My Grandad Vs the Fanga Zoo,' leaving it on a cliffhanger. RK hopes to get a word he made up, 'oopositollogy' (which means the opposite of opposite), into a dictionary one day. To end the visit, RK told funny jokes that had the children laughing their socks off.
Year 3- English-Use questions to open a story.
Before starting their new writing unit, Year 3 were given a fun challenge. Working together in groups, they were tasked with using their imagination to construct something from the objects available to them, such as elastic bands, wood, hoops, sticks and canvas. The children were guided through a series of questions to help them brainstorm ideas for their story's opening paragraph. They were encouraged to imagine their creation as something enormous, suddenly appearing in an unexpected location of their choosing and for example, envisioning an immense car stranded on a remote beach or a colossal metal house situated on a zebra crossing in the heart of London.
Reception: Imagine That Educational Visit
Wow, what a fantastic day our Ducklings had today. We visited Imagine That in Liverpool and had lots of fun! The children did lots of experiments with dry ice, made magical snow and made slime too. They used their imaginations in the roleplay area, painted a car, explored the creative area and made their own magnets. They were well behaved and represented the school beautifully!
Year 4 - English: Grammar
In Year 4, we started our new novel this week: The Firework-Maker’s Daughter. We began the topic with some grammar work on word types and created a fast poem about fireworks. The class really enjoyed creating their poems and a few children chose to perform theirs for the class.
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Year 1 Phonics
Year 1 are working hard in their phonics lessons. This week, they have been focusing on the graphemes 'oy' and 'ou.' They read several words containing these two graphemes, wrote several words and dictated sentences with these two graphemes and recognised whereabouts in a word we usually see them so that they can make more informed choices in their spelling of words with these sounds in them. Well done Year One!
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Year 1- Planning an Instructional Text
Today, Year 1 have worked in teams to plan their instructional text. They gathered the equipment that they needed e.g. hurdles, hula hoop, cones, beanbags, basket balls, footballs, quoits and skipping ropes and used these to create an obstacle course. Year 1 then practised using their obstacle course so that they were able to give instructions to follow their obstacle course clearly. Tomorrow, the children will write their set of instructions.
Year One- Listening and Following Instructions
To kickstart their new English unit on instructions, Year One had to listen to a series of instructions and carry them out. They thoroughly enjoyed this and were absolutely incredible at it. They did this in the context of creating and then completing an obstacle course. E.g. Firstly, crawl under the hurdle. Secondly, run between the cones. Next, put the hula hoop over your head. After that, side gallop to the quoit. Then, throw the quoit in the air and catch it. Finally, drop the quoit and run back to your team. Year One spotted that instructions need both a time conjunction and a verb. They will also learn about using adverbs as part of their instructional writing and retelling too. What a fantastic start to our unit and even better that it was during mental health week as we know how important exercise is to keep us happy and healthy.
Year 5 - Information text
Year 5 completed their information text about the four main peaks in the United Kingdom. The children researched all the four peaks and wrote some amazing facts about them with a report style.
Aladdin Pantomime
This afternoon our whole school family enjoyed a wonderful production of Aladdin by M&M productions. Oh no they didn't! Oh yes they did! It was fabulous to see all of the children joining in through cheering, booing, singing and dancing along to the songs. They particularly enjoyed Mr Prescott and Mr Norris' dancing! The cast said they had never had a school who joined in so well and who all stood up and danced at the end! Thank you so much to our FOSB for their donation and to all of your parent contributions, as without your support, we wouldn't be able to provide such exciting enrichment activities.We hope this has inspired some of our children to audition for our upcoming Barney's Got Talent show next half term. What a fabulous way to end a brilliant week of 'achieving great things' at St Barnabas!
Year 3- Reading- A live reading session with Jane Considine
WOW! Year 3 have just had the pleasure of joining a live session with the amazing author Jane Considine. She read aloud the book Library Lion by Michelle Knudsen and illustrated by Kevin Hawkes. The children absolutely loved it.
Year 4 - English: Debate
In Year 4, we have made a great start on our debate topic. We looked at statements linked to deforestation and decided whether each one was an argument for or against. We find far more arguments against deforestation than for it.