Choose a superhero. We are going to trace a picture of them into the middle of your sheet of paper BUT you cannot use black or pencil, you have to trace in the colour you can see. So if your hero’s hair is blonde, trace their hair in yellow. If their cape is red, trace their cape in red…of course, if you trace something black, use your black pencil! Once you are done, shade in the colours.
Now, label the features and powers your superhero possesses.
Task 2:
Repeat the activity for someone in real life who you consider a hero. It could be a family member, someone in the community, an emergency worker or even someone you see in the newspaper!
Label their heroic qualities, such as hard work or kindness onto the sheet.
We are going to bring the forest to life for our readers. What matters, in descriptive writing, is capturing the details and sensations of being in a place. Presenting your reader with sights, sounds, smells and feelings that they have felt themselves so they can place themselves in the situation you are describing.
What we do not want to do is TELL the reader how they are feeling, instead GIVE THEM CLUES and make them interpret them, themselves!
For example:
You are in a dark, dank forest with huge, mossy trees. It is raining hard and only the fact that you are hidden amongst the trees is stopping you getting soaked. (It’s not bad but you don’t feel as if you are there!
Instead, try:
As your eyes begin to adjust to the gloom, you begin to pick out some of the sounds and smells around you. The deep, occasional creak of think, heavy branches. The quick, sharp rattle of twigs clattering lazily together and the soft, rising & falling rustle of a million leaves in the trees above you. The earth smells rich and mossy in contrast to the fresh scent of pine in the air. You turn up your lincoln green collar and duck further back into the hollow in which you are hidden just in time to avoid the pitter-patter of raindrops falling all around you.(These are all smells and sounds your reader will have experienced before so they will easily be able to picture the scene)
Your challenge:
Go and visit a wooded area. You are soaking up the sounds and smells around you. What can you hear, see and feel? You could take photos and write notes around them. You could record video or record your ideas on book creator. What can you compare the sounds to? Get your family to join in, the more ideas, the better. Do adults have clever vocabulary you can learn? Do they know little sayings that help paint a picture? What we want is for you to have a rich selection of vocabulary and ideas from which you can select from in your writing task tomorrow.
Design yourself a set of Top Trumps cards for the heroes and villains from Robin Hood!
You can:
Choose the style of art you would like to use, Disney, realistic, serious, silly?
Choose the categories, are you going to score the characters on strength, speed, height, cunning, goodness/evilness? What other categories can you think of?
Score, will you give them points out of 5, 10 or even 100? The choice is yours.
At home this weekend, Grace and I worked on a big scribble picture. To begin with, we drew a VERY simple and very light pencil outline of Robin Hood on a big piece of paper. You can make loads of mistakes and redo bits without rubbing out as no one will ever see them! (You don’t have to be a good drawer)
The only bit we put a lot of effort into was the face, especially the eye area.
Add black felt tip carefully to show details such as pupils, eyebrows and even some eye lashes. We added a beard and moustache as we though it fitted the scribble style we were going to use.
Then comes the fun bit! Scribble!!! Keep going over your sketch lines, use different shades of the same colour. You don’t need to be too careful but try to make your scribbles for parts of the picture go in the same direction…we did the shade lines on the face the same direction, we kept going over the hood with different greens.
Finally, add a background by drawing 100s of scribble leaves. Scribble them in light green and scribble in the gaps in dark green. Do really thick scribble when you get close to your character to make him stand out. You can even add secret words and messages into the leaves…
There you have it, a scribble picture…they look best when you do them really big and then view them from far away or take a photo. Share yours with us so we can see your skills!
Homophones are words that are spelled differently and have different meanings, but are pronounced in the same, or almost the same, way. They are often confused in children’s writing. We have covered this before but I want to revisit it as I’ve added in a few new pairs of words…
We would like you to design a wanted poster for at least one of Robin’s Merry Men.
Your poster should, of course, include a sketch of the character but the main part of the poster should be:
a physical description of the character
some reasons that they are “wanted”. What have they done? How have they helped Robin?
appropriate vocabulary, your poster should sound ‘ye olde’ (old) through the old fashioned vocabulary you use
Remember! This is a wanted poster for a criminal! You are not on their side, you want them to be caught and arrested for their crimes so make them sound bad!
This afternoon, we will use some very common household ingredients to make our own ink and quill.
We shall use our ink to draw a portrait of one of the characters from the highwayman on Wednesday.
The ink making and the art lesson will be both be online lessons through Zoom. I will start the connection from 1:15 both days for you to log in.
Tuesday 1:30pm ink making lesson
Zoom Meeting ID: 951 3096 3816
Password: ink
You will need: salt, vinegar, a few handfulls of dark berries such as blueberries or blackberries. (You can make other coloured ink with the appropriate color berry or veg!) You will also need either a fine sieve, muslim cloth or old babric to strain them through.
If you would also like to make a quill, you will need a feather or a thin straw and some scraps of paper & glue.
Wednesday 1:30 portrait drawing
Meeting ID: 990 7137 5354
Password: art
You will need: paper (preferably a3 art paper but whatever you have will work!) your home-made ink, either a stick of charcoal or some ash (you can just have an adult light a few matches and let them burn out, they work just as well)
Just like with our Space topic, we are going to run this topic across all of Key Stage 2. As we do not know what will happen with schooling in the coming weeks and months yet, we have designed this topic to run all of the way through the Summer holiday.
We are going to cover 8 Units, each with a different curricular focus. Some units will be history heavy, some literacy and some sport or music!
Our units are:
Stealing (our hearts!)
Conquer and Divide
World-Changers!
Everyday Heroes
Un-popular music
History HeroZERO!
Champ to Cheat
Be the Hero of Your Own Story…
The work that you add to the blog and the work that pupils who are in school contribute will be added to displays and boards all around school, ready for you to see in September.
Let’s get started with Unit 1: Stealing (our hearts!) We investigate 2 stories where the hero of the story is a thief! Someone who should be a bad guy! We are going to build up towards being able to control viewpoint in our writing, with plenty of reading comprehension, art and practical tasks along the way!
You can choose, on Thursday, which text you wish to work on. “The Highwayman” by Alfred Noyes will be covered on the Year 5&6 blogs whilst Robin Hood will be the focus of the Year 3&4 blogs. YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO THE TEXT ON YOUR BLOG, you can choose to do the work on either but bear in mind the Highwayman is a more difficult text.
On the right-hand side of the blog, you will notice there is an area called ‘categories.’ Clicking these links will show you all of the posts do do with that category.
I have added a new category called LOCKDOWN CHALLENGES to make it easier to see the tasks that the teachers have set without seeing all the work. I know it can take quite a while to scroll down the blog to see what we have set for you (if you’re like me you get distracted by the brill posts all your classmates are adding!) so i wanted to make it as easy as possible.
As we add new challenges, we’ll tag them so just click on LOCKDOWN CHALLENGES when you log on to see the latest tasks.
(As I write this, this is the 76th challenge post!)
As we have quite unusual circumstances in which to host today’s quiz, we are going to have a little challenge! As none of the other teachers have seen the quiz, I thought that they should all join in…so you lot can beat them!
It’s…BEAT THE TEACHER!!!
Some of the staff are going to join in from home.
What we want you guys to do is get a higher score than your teacher!
Remember, you need a device to view the quiz on (with Zoom downloaded and signed into) and a DIFFERENT device to put the answers onto (with kahoot! downloaded onto).
The quiz will begin at 1:30 but I will open up the Zoom link afterwards so we can see the friends in our class for a chat.
The Zoom Meeting ID is:
946 5718 5074
The password is:
quiz
PLEASE do not try to log in before 1:20 as the password WILL NOT work before then.
Have you ever wondered why it is cold in some parts of the world but hot in others? Or why it is warm and sunny or cold and snowy at certain times of the year? It’s all to do with seasons.
What are seasons?
Here is a video to help you understand why we have seasons. Can you use it to answer some of these question below? Use illustrations and diagrams to help you.
What is the equator? Why are countries around the equator hotter?
What are polar regions and why is it colder at the polar regions?
Why do we have seasons? Why is it summer in some countries but winter in others?
How many seasons do we have? Name them. Do all countries have the same seasons? Tricky – explain why!
Click on the above link and scroll down until you get to the video called ‘Invasions’ from Clement-morin.com
This is a short film about an alien who visits earth.
As you are watching, think about what he sees as he travels to different places on Earth and write a log for each of the main events. This might take you a couple days to produce.
For an extra challenge, think how he might describe unfamiliar objects as he might not know the names of these objects.
The astronauts in the ISS get to see the Earth from a completely different viewpoint to the rest of us. Here are some pictures of locations around the Earth, taken from the ground and then from space. can you match the location to the 2 photographs?
I hope you have managed to catch a glimpse of the moon! Let’s find out more about moons!
Can you create a poster/leaflet all about the moon?
You could include some of the following information:
• What is a moon? What shape is it?
• Do all planets in our solar system have moons? Can you name any famous moons and the planets they orbit?
• How long does it take the moon to orbit the Earth?
• How does the moon affect the tides?
• Does the moon produce its own light? Why does it shine? Can the moon only be seen at night?
• Tricky – Why does our moon appear to change shape at different times of the month? Can you explain this and draw and label the different phases of the moon?
Use diagrams and illustrations to help you explain your findings.
Here is a link to help you explain the phases of the moon. Why not try this out yourselves!
A couple of days ago, you looked at why astronauts need space suits and the different jobs they need to do. Space suits:
hold in air and keep out the vacuum of space, so astronauts are able to breathe!!!
pressure, the suits compress the astronaut as space is a vacuum and without the suits pressing down on the astronaut, they would expand and explode!
Keep in warmth (space is VERY cold) as well as reflect harmful direct sunlight!!!
protect astronauts from damage (they are made of very tough materials as a ripped spacesuit means certain death!)
communication, the suits contain cameras, microphones and instruments that measure data about the astronaut
tethers, there are lots of loops and straps for ensuring the astronauts are fastened to the spacecraft and not drifting off into space!
drinking and going to the loo! that’s right, astronauts wear nappies…spacewalks can take over 12 hours and the astronauts are only human after all!
Challenge:
What would you construct an emergency spacesuit from at home? You are only allowed to use materials and items you can find in your house! Now, BEFORE YOU GO AND TIP THE GOLDFISH DOWN THE SINK FOR THE BOWL, you do not HAVE to make this spacesuit! Lots of your parents are busy enough managing homeschool and work without you cutting up the duvet and pinching bits from the dish washer! There are lots of ways you could do this task:
design the spacesuit on paper and label the different materials (and explain why you selected them)
make a mini space suit for a teddy bear or pet
take photos of items around home and explain why they would be perfect for a space suit
lay items out into the shape of a person to show what your suit could look like
make a table, with a colum, that explain what a space suit must do, a column for the item you would use and a column for why it is a good choice
go nuts…yes your teachers have noticed that some of your parents are absolutely bonkers and seem even keener to dismantle the house for crazy school projects than you do… so go on, let them go for it and make you a space suit!!!
I can’t wait to see the results of this one! Mrs Rees and I are trying to make a display in school so all of your writing, art, diagrams and photos will get used!
I have seen this ace idea for an activity that is easy to do at home. You could do this activity two ways, as a sewing task or by making a viewing telescope.
Sewing:
This would be a great way of adding extra information to the back, such as; the number of stars in the constellation, where in the sky you find it, which galaxy it belongs to, the name of the stars, is the constellation used for anything such as navigation. Maybe you think it looks like something else and could ‘join the dots in a different way and give it your own name!
This is a nice, fun activity. make sure you use thick card or black paper for the constellation card to completely block the light. Can you use your telescope to help you locate the constellation in the sky?
This week, you will be learning about the phases of the moon. Your first task is to observe the moon each night. Record the shape of the moon on the grid below. Do this for a full month (or more). What do you notice? (If you can’t see the moon due to it being cloudy, just draw a cloud picture in the appropriate place.
I wonder who will manage to keep up their record for the full month?
When a rocket or shuttle is launched into space, it burns an incredible amount of fuel! Take a look at this infographic:
Look at how small the part that actually holds the astronauts is! Before the year 2000, to launch anything into space, NASA spent $18,500 PER KILOGRAM!!!
So as you can imagine, they only send things that are vital and reduce weight as much as possible. Therefore, the astronauts are only allowed a few special possessions. My challenge for you is, tell me what special items you would take for a year in space and explain why.
Think about the planet that you researched. What would an alien be like if it could survive on that planet? What would it be called? Below are some ideas for creatures that could live on Mars or Jupiter, but these are just ideas. You might design something completely different.
Draw, paint or make a model of your alien and describe it, explaining why it has those particular features.
Our Key Worker group, in the school hall, are looked after by Mr. Mathieson. Just like you at home, they are attempting the Space topic challenges set by Mrs Rees and I on the blogs. I thought you may like to see what your friends have done so far and then you could share what you’ve done at home on the same challenges!!!
Make sure you post everything or email it to me so I can make sure my blog is better than Mrs Rees’s and Mr Mathieson’s!!!!! 😜 (‘cos I’ve already told them it will be!!!!)
We are going to TRY to host a quiz for you all on Zoom, this Friday at 1:30pm. To play, you will need:
A device to use Zoom on.
This can be a laptop, a smart TV, a tablet or a phone but the bigger screens work best. You mustfirst download Zoom onto the device and register yourself for a free account. I will be admitting people to the group on Friday and will obviously not admit anyone who we don’t recognise so please use your child’s name as their username so we can admit them easily.
Our Zoom meeting ID
Type this number into Zoom to access the meeting on Friday afternoon:
471 482 8743
Use the password
quiz
A device to use Kahoot on.
You will need a different device to answer the questions on. You need to download the free Kahoot app. When the quiz starts, there will be a pin number on the screen that you type into your app to join the game.
If this goes anything like the quizzes we have done for Years 3 & 4 and the one I tried on the staff, all sorts will go wrong! However it works out, it will be lovely to see you guys and for you all to see each other. I will start the Zoom broadcast a little early to help people logging on and try and solve any issues.
Bear with me, it will only be the second time I’ve used Zoom so I won’t be very slick! Good luck and have fun!
As this year’s music festival couldn’t go ahead, Barnsley Music Services are putting together an alternative to help to give children an opportunity to work towards a performance.
They will be able to learn how to play part of ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’ via online learning. Please click on the link below for the further information and resources to support you.
The final arrangements for how young people can join in with the performance on Friday 26th June will appear on the website above very soon once finalised.
Can you name all of the planets and their order? Do you have a way of remembering this?
Which planet would you like to visit? Why?
Find information about your chosen planet. Think about the size of it, the colour of it, how far it is away from the sun or earth, what the atmosphere is like, whether it has any moons etc.
Think about how to present your information. You could paint, draw, make a model, write a fact file, produce a PowerPoint, make a video – it’s up to you.
Remember to share your work on the blog or email me: t.rees@birdwellprimary.org.uk I would love to see which planet you selected and how you chose to present your information.
Over 50 years ago, three men on the Apollo 11 mission landed on the moon – for the first time in history! It was a momentous event that caught the attention of the world. Here are some amazing facts about the space race and the moon landing.
1. The moon is 238,855 miles away from Earth. Even whizzing through space at super-high speed, it takes more than three days to get there.
2. Out in space, away from Earth, there is no gravity holding astronauts down, so they float around in their spaceships. Sometimes called zero-g.
3. The lunar module, Eagle, was so small that there was no room for seats. While Eagle dropped 60 miles to the moon’s surface, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin had to stand up.
4. The landing site that Apollo 11 crew had chosen was an area called the Sea of Tranquillity, which looked smooth and safe for landing. This isn’t a sea as we know it. It’s a lunar mare – a large plain formed long ago by a volcanic eruption.
5. When Neil Armstrong landed the lunar module, there were only 30 seconds of fuel left. Yikes!
6. Neil Armstrong was supposed to say ‘That’s one small step for a man’, but he forgot to say ‘a’. Instead, he said the now-famous words, ‘One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind’.
7. Gravity on the moon is only one-sixth as strong as gravity on Earth. If you jumped on the moon, you’d go six times higher. Wow!
8. While Neil Armstrong may have been the first man to set foot on the moon, Buzz Aldrin was the first man to go to the toilet there, using a special tube in his spacesuit!
9. An amazing woman called Katherine Johnson carried out the calculations that made the mission to the moon possible and got the astronauts home again. Katherine’s incredible achievement made it possible for other women and people of colour to follow in her footsteps, breaking down barriers of race and gender.
10. While he was still working for NASA after returning from the moon, Neil Armstrong helped invent computer navigation technology called ‘fly-by-wire’, which is still used in spacecraft and aeroplanes today.
We’re going to start our last half term with a two-week topic about Surviving in Space. All of KS2 are going to work on this topic together. The children who are gradually returning to school will be joining in the same work with us that you are doing at home. So, it will be fun to share what is happening at school and at home.
Each day, I will post a new activity linked to this. There will be plenty of variety, including research, creative writing, art work, D & T and science. I thought we’d start with something current.
Nasa Astronauts make history with Space X launch.
Many of you may have watched this live on Saturday. Here is a short clip for you to watch again or for those who didn’t see it.
Can you find out the answers to these questions? Find an interesting way to present your information including pictures. I’m really missing seeing your work so please remember to share your work on the blog or email me if you just want me to see it: t.rees@birdwellprimary.org.uk
Why was this an historic event?
This was actually the second attempt at lift-off. Why didn’t the first attempt happen on Wednesday?
Where are they travelling to?
Name the two astronauts.
How are their space suits different to other space suits in the past?
Hi kids. Mr. Mathieson and I are not able to meet up this week so quiz 3 will take place next Friday, with 2 major changes.
We are going to swap to Zoom for our quiz rather than YouTube (so I need to get practicing using it!) The advantage will be that we will be able to see you guys, as well as you, seeing us!!!
The other change will be that the quiz will move into school-time. Mr. Mathieson and I will be hosting the Friday quiz on a Friday afternoon for you guys at home. We are also learning how to host some live lessons for you guys over Zoom as well so watch this space…
We hope you are all enjoying the beautiful weather and staying safe, Mr. Mathieson and Mr. Swallow
A big that you to Charlie for recommending this site and to Oliver for inspiring us with his nature report. There are some lovely activities to get you guys outdoors and enjoying the half-term sunshine!
Hopefully we shall be able to read comments you add to the YouTube But please only add one or two as we don’t want to slow the feed down.
Hopefully, this week the feed will run quicker as we’ve changed the set up quite a bit. We have found that pressing “refresh” once you have joined can bring your browser up to the correct point.
Thanks for all the feedback we received about the last quiz, both good and bad. It seems as though the main issue was caused by the delay between us broadcasting the video and everyone receiving it. This delay sometimes got so long that by the time people were seeing the question on screen, the time to answer had already ended.
We have been looking at ways of improving this. The next quiz will be broadcast in much lower resolution and we will be taking a much more basic approach to sharing the quiz screen with you. This should reduce the amount of information we are trying to broadcast and therefore improve the speed. We are also going to extend the answer time to 90 seconds for all of the questions to give everyone time to answer, even if they do experience some amount of delay. As soon as everyone has answered, Kahoot moves on anyway so this shouldn’t feel too different.
I am also trying to make it possible for comments to be viewable on the YouTube feed so we can read aloud messages from you all but please only send one or two at most as we don’t want to slow the feed down.
Our next quiz will have sections on; Children’s Literature, Movies, Video Games and The World! If you would like a particular category adding in future quizzes, let us know and we’ll do our best. I will send you out a new link on Friday morning and the link will be on here again. Hopefully, more of you will get to participate this time. Mr Mathieson and I are not experienced at all with being YouTubers (as you kids call it) and unfortunately are learning how to use all the technology as we go. This has obviously led to the frustrations for some of you so far. I can only apologise for the mistakes I made in the set up last week that spoiled the experience for some of you, I can’t guarantee that something similar won’t go wrong this week but we shall try our best to improve on the mistakes each go.
I have highlighted the nounsb as well as the expanded noun phrases (remember, these are more than one word where extra detail is added to the noun, making a ‘phrase’) They came up a lot on our last grammar test. I have NOT highlighted any pronouns. (A pronoun identifies a noun without using its name). There were lots of them, can you identify any?
This week’s topic challenge is to create your own Stone Age weapon! Below is a brilliant video covering the Stone Age era, can you pick out any important information about the weapons?
During the Stone Age, people used sharpened sticks for hunting and protection purposes, they were vital for survival in the Stone Age. They were also used to hunt certain animals like wolves, foxes, bears, deer, hyena and much more.
Check out the weapons that have already been made… maybe you could do something similar?
You could design your Stone Age weapon on paper first, labelling the key parts of it. Next, you could manufacture the weapon by using cardboard, sticks, string, rocks or any other household items – just get your parents permission first!
Here is a copy of those tricky words we just have to learn in Year 4. DON’T try and do them all at once remember, pick 5, 10 or 15 at a time and work at those until you have them. Highlight them off and try some more.
If there are some that keep catching you out, highlight them in red and keep re-visiting them.
Remember, these are not words that always follow spelling rules or that have a difficult pattern in them. We can use tricks such as making them into a saying (like Sally Anne Is Dancing spells SAID) or make the word into a picture (like we remember where and there are the ones that tells us a place and they have a tree on a hill in them (there are the only where/wear/were/wear or there/their/they’re that has a h in them and that is what looks like a tree on a hill!)
What rules help you remember your Year 4 Word List?
Can you design your own Stone circle? You could make it from craft or building materials, at our house, we went for wooden blocks and Lego. My kids got fascinated with lining their models up to the sun outside!!!
Or, create an eye-catching piece of artwork using a similar technique to when we did our Winter work for Narnia when we placed a dark silhouette infront of a bright background. (Anyone remember what we called that process?) I’ve put some examples below:
As you are probably aware, White Rose are continuing to publish free online video tutorials every week but no longer free worksheets. School has subscribed to White Rose so we can publish the sheets for you here.
Here is the link to the video tutorials for this week:
Here are the daily worksheets: (As before, PLEASE don’t feel you have to religiously work through every question, they are designed to approach the learning from lots of different angles which is repetitive if you do them all. Choose the questions that you think make sense to you and which you think will challenge your child.)
Day 1: [embeddoc url=”https://birdwellyear4.edublogs.org/files/2020/05/Lesson-1-Correspondence-problems-2019.pdf” download=”all” viewer=”google” ]
Prehistoric people were known as hunter-gatherers. as the name suggests, they ate what they hunted, caught or gathered from trees, plants and the ground.
They were not farmers, they had not figured out yet that you could plant crops and fruit for the following year so that meant they starved if they couldn’t find food. This caused them to move around, looking for animals and food. Most of the time they would live in camps so they could move easily. It also meant that they would be prepared to eat just about anything they found!
Challenge: The next time you go on your family walk, gather or list EVERYTHING that you would be prepared to eat if you were a hungry hunter-gatherer! Berries, nuts, seeds, mice, birds. EVERYTHING you see.
Put me together a caveman menu using ONLY what you found on your walk…let’s see if you found enough to keep you going until tomorrow!!!
Once you have mastered fire, you can stay warm in winter, scare off dangerous animals and cook delicious food. Your second challenge is to be a true caveman and cook a meal over a flame. This could be a jacket potato wrapped in foil on your own, home-made fire or a burger on your BBQ. Again, THIS MUST BE WITH ADULT SUPERVISION AT ALL TIMES! PLEASE TREAT FIRE aND HOT SURFACES WITH CARE AND STAY SAFE!
Let Mr. Mathieson and I see your caveman meals…I can tell that we are going to be slobbering onto our keyboards!!!
In Unit 1, we have established that cavemen lived in caves and this helped shelter and protect them. Keeping them safe from animals, warm in winter and allowing them to store food and essentials. It meant that families could live together and look out for one another.
Cavemen also discovered how to make fire and this made a HUGE difference to their survival. Not only does food taste much nicer when it’s cooked but heating the food does 3 really important things:
it kills bacteria in the food that can make humans sick or even die
it preserves the food so that it can last longer
adding water can make a little food feed a lot of people (like soups and stews)
You have already built and decorated your own cave. Now we want to see your fire building skills! We want you to make sure you do 3 steps:
Build a fire-proof ring to keep the fire contained and safe. You could use stones or bricks or even a ring of earth
add the wood! this sounds simple but you need to ensure that the bigger, longer-lasting logs are at the bottom as they will be the hardest to light. You also want to build the timber (planed wood) or lumber (rough, natural wood) into a pyramid or teepee shape so that the flames can be fed
add kindlin. this is thin, easily lit and easy to burn material such as shredded newspaper, moss (or fluff from your tumble-drier). Add the kindlin around and inside the bottom of your teepee
That’s it! You have built your own campfire. Your task is complete. BUT…if you have a grown-up to supervise you and you are feeling adventurous, you could light your campfire to see if you have done a good job.
PLEASE TREAT FIRE WITH RESPECT AND NEVER PLAY WITH FIRE. DO NOT TRY TO LIGHT A FIRE WITHOUT ADULT SUPERVISION AND NEVER LEAVE YOUR FIRE UNATTENDED.
Last year, when Mr. Mathieson covered the Stone Age, he read a book with his class called Stone Age boy. He loved it and got lots of ideas from it so we thought you might like to take a look. I can’t send you an online copy to read but I did find a video of a little boy reading it to us.
Good morning everyone, the work you have done on the art competition is fabulous. You have obviously spent a great deal of time working on these to create these images. I am so impressed and it has been an utter delight for myself and the rest of the staff to see these. They are so bright, colourful and detailed and using lots of different medium.
There have been so many to look through so it has been very challenging indeed to make a final decision. Well done to everyone who took part, however, there can only be one winner and that is Toby in Y4 for his lovely and accurate drawing of Mrs Buckley.
Thank you once again to everyone who took part and had a go, it has been so lovely to see your art work.
As you can see, we are continuing to learn about decimals, thus week we are rounding decimal numbers, representing halves and quarters as decimals and looking at money!
As always, please pick and choose the activities you do. The White Rose sheets and lessons are very good but if you do every question every day they can be very time consuming. Learning at home can be difficult and it’s not the same as being at school so keep it manageable and keep it fun. Don’t feel bad about missing a day and working on your times tables or doing something fun! AND keep sharing what you are doing with me!
I find cave painting so fascinating, there’s a special reason why the cavemen painted animals on the cave walls, can any of you find out why they did it?
Here’s a quick and easy tip that will make your cave art replicate the real thing…
Once you have drawn your picture, leave it to dry and spray over it with hairspray (don’t worry, you won’t use the full can so you’ll have plenty left to do your hair!)
After the hairspray has dried you need to cover it by using a tea bag. Here’s the trick – ASK A PARENT TO OVERSEE (I don’t want any burnt hands or tea stains in the house). Leave the teabag in hot water, let it cool down and then gently ‘pinch’ the teabag out and dab it over the artwork. Dip the teabag back into the water as it will start to dry when applying it to your artwork.
Leave the artwork to dry and you’ll have your very own cave art.
Cavemen decorated their caves and shelters with pictures of the animals they saw, the friends they lived with and hand-prints that can still be seen by us all of these thousands of years later.
I would like you guys to have a go at your own cave paintings. I have posted some links to sites online that have examples. There are lots of different ways of doing authentic-looking ones, including; working on old cardboard boxes, using hands in mud and painting with brushes. (So we don’t have to destroy your mum’s lovely wall paper!!!) As always, let me see what you get up to, I’ll be having a go at this with Syd today so I’ll do the same!
All living things need certain things to survive and flourish. They need to eat and drink, they need to rest, they need to stay warm or cool enough and shelter to keep them safe. Cavemen were so successful because they found a way of improving all of these things…by using…(that’s right)…a cave!
Think: How would life in a cave or shelter be better than living outside for:
Eating & drinking
Keeping warm or cool
Resting
Keeping safe
I want you to pretend to be a caveman (not too difficult for some of you I imagine!) Now the first thing you are going to need is a cave! You could build it out of your duvet cover or a big box…let your imagination run wild (and tell your parents I understand that the first day back I will have lots of cross Mummys to answer to!) Do a good job and maybe you could sleep in it tonight??? If you do an amazing job, it may even protect you from the angry parents when they see what your challenge is!!!
Once you have built your cave, I want you to tell me all about why it is so good at improving your life (as a caveman) and keeping you alive. You could do it as a piece of writing or a letter along with a photo of your cave. Or you could make a video diary, showing off your new shelter and explaining why it is a big improvement on just living outside. Let’s see what you come up with.
I can’t wait for the rest of unit 1…here’s a sneak preview of what will be coming up:
To support you during these difficult and challenging times the following link below is a new BBC Bitesize primary planner. A ten minute daily Podcast commencing on the 20th April covering the National Curriculum and links to other useful resources. This will also cover some elements of how to cope during these challenging times. This is available on BBC sounds via the web or via the BBC sounds App.
This week, we would normally be starting our new topic:
Could you survive the Stone Age?
So Mr. Mathieson and I thought it would be a good idea to find out about what life was like in the Stone Age. What did our ancient ancestors wear, eat and shelter in? Are they really like they are portrayed in films? Hairy and strong, wearing fur and hitting things with clubs? When was the Stone Age? Why was it called the Stone age? What was the world like back then?
This is a rule that we covered in Spring Term 1 but it is one I like to revisit. All of these spelling patterns sound like they say “SHUN” at the end of words but they are spelled a variety of ways:
-tion -sion -ssion –cian
Can you remember one of the ways we can spot which pattern to use? That’s right, the root word can give us a clue in the way that it is spelled. For example:
Root word: Suffix:
magic Magician
Try to identify the root word for each of these spellings that fit our rule:
Barnsley Council’s annual Barnsley in Bloom poster competition will still go ahead, despite schools being closed. This year, instead of children designing their artwork in school, they are encouraged to get creative at home.
The poster competition will run from Wednesday 15 to Thursday 30 April. Children up to the age of 16 are encouraged to draw their best Barnsley in Bloom picture on a sheet of A4 paper, take a picture of it and email it to parkservices@barnsley.gov.uk with the subject: ‘Barnsley in Bloom entry’. Include the child’s age and name in your email. This year there is no specific theme – just get inspired by nature and the flowers blooming around your home this spring. Use colours and paints to brighten up your picture.
There will be three age categories: six and under, seven to 11 and 12-16. Our park services team will judge and shortlist the artwork, and then the Mayor will choose one winner from each age category. Each winner will receive a certificate over email, and their artwork will be shared on Barnsley Council’s social media channels, so everyone in the borough can celebrate them.
Cllr Pauline Markham, Mayor of Barnsley, said; “This year we’re doing the Barnsley in Bloom competition slightly differently, but we still want all of Barnsley’s budding young artists to get involved. This fun activity should hopefully keep children entertained for a while at home, and I encourage families to stick their artwork in their window so that other children can enjoy spotting them on their daily exercise.
“I’m sorry that I won’t be able to welcome the winners to lunch with me at the Town Hall, but hopefully they will enjoy seeing their artwork being celebrated online.”
This news is linked to Town Spirit, our new way of working better together. We believe, that if everyone in Barnsley does just one thing, we can make our borough a more welcoming place to live, work, invest and visit.
The task this week will take you all week if you are going to do it properly. We are going to produce a piece of creative writing GOOD ENOUGH TO GO IN YOUR WRITING ASSESSMENT FOLDERS!!!!! That’s right, best writing at home!
Now to get to this best piece, we are going to learn different stages (like we would do in class). Then it will be your job on Friday to put the pieces back together independently in one piece of writing.
I shall add the next step each day…
Monday: Types of ending.
The Lady of Shalott ends with the death of the eponymous Lady. This type of ending is known as a tragedy. (A sad ending, where people die or do not get what they deserve.) It is also implicit (this means it doesn’t explain why or how the story really ends, you have to guess certain bits, like ‘Why was she cursed?’) This is a very unusual type of ending for a school text but very important to learn about, as sad and scary texts are very good at engaging us emotionally and involving us in the story. Here are some other types of ending, can you apply them to our poem? How would the story have turned out with these different types of ending? (I’ve done one for you, can you give your own twist and explain the rest? you can work with a grown-up)
Twist: It turns out that Lancelot was the one who imprisoned her in the tower and reveals this when he sees her float down to Camelot!!!
Happy ending:
Explicit: (You reveal all the details and explain everything)
The long view (What are the characters’ lives like in years to come?)
The cliff-hanger! (Something happens at the end that leaves us in suspense, the story ends with us dying to know what will happen next!)
So, come up with your own version of each and apply it to the Lady of Shalott. Then, research (ask friends and family) and create a list of stories, books, films or poems which fit into each category. these will help us structure the ending you choose to go for on Friday.
Here is a link to a video of the story in case you’ve forgotten the poem!
Plus a (very simple) storyboard
Tuesday
Today’s learning is all about figurative language. As we know from reading the poem, Tennyson was amazing at using detailed description to paint a picture. For example, instead of saying, ‘winter is coming, he tells us, “willows whiten, aspens quiver.” He is getting us to understand what he is tellings us by giving us clues and painting a picture. We can do the same trick…if I tell you:
“As I stepped out of the door, I shielded my eyes with my hand and squinted, trying to make out the shapes outside. By the end of the street, I had already begun to perspire a little and my new flip flops were blistering my feet.
What is the weather like?
What time of year could it be?
How can you tell?
Can you use the same trick to paint a picture of:
a rainy day
a scary situation
riding a roller coaster
opening an amazing birthday present
Remember, give clues, don’t tell us what you are doing.
Wednesday & Thursday
now I want us to work on a grammar skill that we have already visited in class. We are going to use a subordinate clause to add extra information to a sentence. We are going to separate the main clause from the subordinate clause with a comma. like this…
Main clause , Subordinate clause
Mr Swallow forgot to post our challenge, he is getting very old and forgetful.
Subordinate clause , Main clause
Due to the nice weather, I went for a game of football in the garden.
So the main clause is the important information and the subordinate clause adds extra detail. We separate the two with a comma. The subordinate clause can come at the beginning, the end or even in the middle:
Main clause , Subordinate clause , Main clause
I got in and immediately, because of the lockdown, washed my hands thoroughly.
Try out this skill with some sentences of your own. Vary the position of the subordinate clause and remember to separate it from the main clause using a comma.
Writing time! I would like you to write an alternative ending to the Lady of Shallot showcasing some of the skills you have worked on this week. Think about:
the type of ending you would like to go for, use some other examples of texts with that type of ending as a model
descriptive, figurative language, make us work hard, give clues not details
can you use subordinate clause to add extra detail and vary where you use them
also, think of other skills we have practised through the year, such as paragraphing or direct speech and the punctuation that goes with them.
most importantly, post up your writing so I can read it 😁
This is a very difficult concept to work with but day 1 is nice and simple, it teaches you to think of decimals as 1 whole broken into 100 pieces (like 100th in fractions). Follow the link and watch the video tutorial first.
There is even a Flashback 4 (watch out, question 1 is tricky!)
Mrs O’Neill has seen that we are working on homophones and set you an online challenge…it goes pretty fast so you should probably pause it when each pair of pictures pops up to give you time to guess the homophone and write both versions down in your home school book. Then you can press play again to see if you got it right!
The last week we did spellings, we investigated common homophones that we tend to mix up.
Here is a reminder for you to test yourselves on:
where/wear/were/we’re
there/their/they’re
are/our (this is especially common in Barnsley!)
your/you’re
thought/through/though/tough (not really homophones but easily mixed up)
which/witch
knight/night
write/right
What others can you think of? Can you come up with ways of remembering which one is which (remember when we drew a tree on a hill in “where”, as it’s the only one with a “h” and it’s a place?)
I will put a test for you to do and the answers later in the week!
One of the things we were going to learn about in school was, “What was life like living in a castle?”
Your challenge is to find out about and imagine what life would be like for you if you were a real-life knight/lady/lord/servant who lived in a castle. What jobs would you do in a day? What would it feel like? Cold? Smelly? Use all of your senses! Who would you see?
You could present your work as a diary, a picture or a fact file. I’m sure you will come up with something I’ve not thought of!
I would also like to make your own castle…it sounds like the nation will soon have lots and lots of toilet roll tubes going spare! Or cornflake packets! It could even just be made from a page in your book. Let’s see who can make the best!
We have seen the rainbows people have been making to cheer everyone up. We had a lovely break on the field and decided to make our own rainbow out of the materials we could find around us.
Mr. Matheison and I are going to be giving you all a call at home today to see how you are all getting on (and to see if you are behaving for your parents!!!!) Let us know what you are up to and what you have planned.
Thank you so much to all of you who have posted up your work and your activities at home, I have really enjoyed reading through them all. I’m missing you guys and it is VERY weird being in school without you all!
We don’t want your brains turning to mush at home with too much TV or X Box! To keep yourself busy during this unusual period, try to do a little school-work every day.
As we are constantly posting new content onto the blog, it can be difficult to keep track of the different tasks set and the online activities you can try so I’ve created this sticky post (that just means it will always stay at the top of the posts) to help us keep track of everything. As we add new challenges or activities, I will update them here.
However, it is equally important to spend time with your family, get outside when you can, bake, draw, paint and all the other things that are fun ways to spend your time doing! We don’t know how long this way of working will last but let’s make the most of it!
Take care of yourselves and keep posting what you get up to at home!!!
Look up into the sky tonight at 7.41 pm and International Space Station will be visible overhead for 4 minutes. It appears from WSW and disappears ESE ( you can use your compass on your phone for this) It is a bright light that tracks across the sky. If you have access to the internet you can google – How many people in space right now? and it will let you know which astronauts are aboard, how long they have been there and their nationalities.
We have learned a little about Sir Lancelot and a few of the other knights of the round table in class.
Here is the quote from, “Tales of Brave Adventure”, that we read from in school:
The Knights of the Round Table were characters in the legends about King Arthur. They were the best knights in King Arthur’s kingdom, and lived in King Arthur’s castle, Camelot. They were called the Knights of the Round Table because of a special table that was in Camelot, that was round instead of rectangular. This meant that everyone who sat around it was seen as equal.
In order to become a Knight of the Round Table, a knight had to prove he was chivalrous (honourable) enough. In the legend, the knights swore a Code of Chivalry, which is much like an oath is today. This meant that they promised to uphold the rules given to them once they became a Knight of the Round Table.
Can you find out more about the knights and what their code of honour was? You could write a set of rules for knights to follow for our class, so we all know how to be honourable and treat one-another with respect! Can you make your knightly code look like an ancient scroll? Or could you post a picture of you and your scroll looking knightly and chivalrous? (You could use; serious expressions, cardboard cornflake packet swords and bedsheet capes guys!)
The team who we buy our maths scheme and resources from have launched a free, Working-at-home web service for all of our pupils and parents to use. There is an activity a day linked exactly to your age and point in school and video tutorials to teach you how to do it too! I’ll be out of a job at this rate!
Please bear in mind that the website is getting a HUGE amount of traffic during the day so it may be better to access the site at night and download the resources to use the following day.
Hi kids. Today is our first day of working from home. I hope you are all behaving and helping out at home. I’ve added a copy of the planning for our lady of Shalott topic so you can see what else we would have been doing in school.
All of the teachers will be logging on to their blogs and setting challenges and seeing what you have all been up to. It is really important that we all stay in touch so remember to add posts showing us all your work.
Don’t forget, there are links to sites that school has subscribed to inside the cover of your work-from-home book, along with your usernames and passwords. I’ve added a link from the White Rose maths scheme we follow so you can try out activities in the same way you are used to working in school. It’s the last activity page from the block of fractions we have just been working on in class. Click the link below…
We are going to be able to log onto the blog ourselves, with our special username and password so that we can post up all the projects we get up to at home!
I have created us an account on Oxford reading owls. You can access books suited to our year group for free.
Look up into the sky tonight at 7.41 pm and International Space Station will be visible overhead for 4 minutes. It appears from WSW and disappears ESE ( you can use your compass on your phone for this) It is a bright light that tracks across the sky. If you have access to the internet you can google – How many people in space right now? and it will let you know which astronauts are aboard, how long they have been there and their nationalities.