Grammar Improvement

This site is excellent for improving your grammar. Get better at:

• Using adverbs
• Using apostrophes
• Writing interesting sentences
• Getting tenses right
• Describing people, places and things

Click here

Character Trading Cards

Improve your understanding of characters in the stories you read. Fill out the planning sheet first, then go online and create the trading cards. Here's the link to the cards... click here

Holiday Reading - Contracts

The kids have chosen a book to read over the holiday, and signed a contract stating that they will finish the book before we come back to school in January. Parents have been asked to read with their kids in order to help them. Here's the books they've chosen:

Matilda by Roald Dahl - Tanhaz and Farisha
Operation Terror by Margaret Mahy - Safwan
The Big Goal by Rob Childs - Shuvo
Goosebumps Deep Trouble by R. L. Stine - Albab
Left Behind: The Kids by Jerry B. Jenkins and Tim LaHaye - Ashiana
The Big Win by Rob Childs - Rafsan
The Mighty Skink by Paul Shipton - Mankanwar
Funny Stories chosen by Michael Rosen - Jaju
Wilmot and Chips by Alex Shearer - Saahir
Great Save by Rob Childs - Aniket

Jigsawing With Non-Fiction Books About Our Bodies

Each student read one of five books about the human body independently.

They then got together in groups with people who had read the same book. I gave them some thought-provoking questions to consider when discussing the book together.

After ten minutes of in-depth conversation, they got into groups of people who had all read different books. they took it in turns to tell the group about what they had read and to share the most interesting or important information they had found.

This technique is a great way for students to pick up knowledge very quickly, and to get a good idea about what a book is about and how it may help them with research in the future.

Cinqains

We're writing Cinqain poems to develop our "human body" vocabulary. We're concentrating on human movement, sports and physical activity. We wrote a poem together on the whiteboard to learn about the form of Cinqains. It's about Mr. Sherratt's favourite sport, Surfing, and here it is:

Surfers Line 1: Subject
Brave, balanced Line 2: Two describing words
Paddling, aiming, controlling Line 3: -ing words about the subject
They tame the wild waves Line 4: A sentence about the subject
Drifters Line 5: Another name for the subject

Look out for Cinquains by the students of 4S!

Poetry in Motion

I found a plan for 5 lessons about Poetry in Motion on the Internet and thought it would be a great way to do some poetry writing while we learn more about the human body. You can click here to see all the plans, just in case you want to work on some of the steps at home!!!

Click on these links to read some sports poetry by other people:

Link One
Link Two - this one includes some activities based on the poems
Link Three

Homework - Acrostic Poems

you have probably done lots of Acrostic Poems in school before. However, you might not know how useful they can be for brainstorming, working on your voacbulary and being creative.

http://www.readwritethink.org/materials/acrostic/