Good morning to you all; I hope you are all well. Hopefully you continue to find the blogs useful and remember they are merely here as options for you to use. Please, please, please - if you ever have any questions or you feel like you need advice for any aspect of home schooling, please let us know through our email - it is very strange working in a vacuum, we all miss you too!
ks1@downhallprimary.com
English - Story Writing
So we are now ready to write our story - we have thought about the story so far and the words used to explore the settings and we have made a story mountain to plan for our story. It can be tricky to get started so we often give the children the first sentence to get them going:
Yasmin, Jack and Lee ran down the tunnel.
Now some parents have asked for guidance in how they can best support their children's independent writing so I thought I would spend some time on this today. There are 2 main ways you can try and it depends largely on your own children's approach to writing tasks.
Approach 1 - If your child finds it hard to develop ideas about what to write you need to discuss ideas BEFORE they write a sentence. You can even suggest the sentence. Let's take the idea above. Before writing we could improve it. We do this by using our hierarchy of sentence features from GPS lessons last week:
Capital letters
Finger spaces
Full stops
Adjectives
Conjunctions
Adverbs
The first 3 we remind whilst (or after - see approach 2) writing but hang on - we should describe our tunnel. What could we use? Dark? Winding? Spooky? It is important to generate a few ideas and then your child selects their favourite one.
Yasmin, Jack and Lee ran down the dark tunnel.
(Year 2's - if you wish to use 2 adjectives remember to separate them with a comma "dark, winding tunnel." Don't use more than 2 adjectives; it sounds like a menu!)
Also look to improve generic verbs (ran, went, got). What might be better? (rushed, crept, grabbed).
Yasmin, Jack and Lee rushed down the dark tunnel.
Ok - looking better already. Next down the hierarchy is conjunctions, let's add to the sentence.
And, but, so, because, when, while, where.
Yasmin, Jack and Lee rushed down the dark tunnel so they were safely away from the hungry fox.
Yasmin, Jack and Lee rushed down the dark tunnel but something made them suddenly stop.
Yasmin, Jack and Lee rushed down the dark tunnel while the fox's digging faded behind them.
We help the children refine their sentence before they write, reminding them of the choices as they write.
Approach 2 - If your child is not phased by independent writing, they can become annoyed if you stop their "flow" so we let them write and then go back and follow the same approach as above but retrospectively. Check for capital letters and full stops - particularly if a plague of "ands" has begun to spread! Look to change generic verbs, add in adjectives and extend sentences using conjunctions.
The children are used to this - it is why we "write a line; miss a line" in our books, so they have room to edit and improve.
A Word On Spelling
You may notice that spelling is no where to be seen on the hierarchy. It is because the use of phonics is so ingrained in everything we do (as it has been from EYFS) that we might as well add use a pencil to hierarchy. Children use their segmenting skills to spell words, that is split a word into phonemes (sheep; sh-ee-p) and we try not to pick up on every mistake as they write as this can make the children less likely to make ambitious choices (rushed instead of ran).
After writing, look for common errors that could help your children in the future (-ing, -ed errors in common suffixes, magic e words, looking again at some words that went most awry).
TASK - Have a go at your story extension. Break it up into small sessions and re-visit if your child flags. Again we would not seek to do this in 1 go in school so nor should you. If you get a little way in but not to the end, this is also absolutely fine. Good luck and even if you get something down on paper, we are all very proud of you!
History - At The Beach
Developing on from last week's picture comparing a Victorian holiday with a holiday from the present day, we can watch the sublime Magic Grandad. If you have not encountered Magic Grandad before, you are in for a treat. Get the popcorn, settle in and watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZlL77ZfXkI
After, have a chat about the things that were different and the things that were the same. Always consider intentions. Why did they go on holiday? Why did they do the things shown?
Ask your child - would you have enjoyed going on the promenade just over 100 years ago? Why?
Wishing you a wonderful day!
KS1 Team
