Reading
Class Novel

This term our class novel is 'Great Expectations'. We are enjoying making predictions about who Pip's anonymous benefactor could be, summarising key themes and clarifying interesting vocabulary. The children are, as usual, totally immersed in the story and have enjoyed acting out scenes between Magwitch and young Pip in lessons.

English

In English, we are writing a biography of Winston Churchill. The children thoroughly enjoyed researching his life in order to find factual information to include in their own writing. We are looking forward to producing high-quality texts which include features we have previously worked on, including bullet points and the passive voice. 

We have investigated existing biographies of Charles Darwin, David Walliams and William Shakespeare so that we understand the purpose and audience of this text type, the intended effect on the reader and grammatical features and vocabulary that could be included. This information is on our working walls for the children to refer to.

Our next piece of writing is a mysterious narrative based on the short film 'Alma'. Some children are adapting the story to include their own characters or changing the narrator. We have worked incredibly hard to create an atmosphere using figurative language. Some of our favourite sentences so far are...

A bitter wind tore through the suburbs.

It was almost like Alma's feet were being drawn towards the enticing shop door.

On that dreadful day, the sky was as dark as a black abyss.

The cascading snow hit the rooftops of the dingy, dilapidated properties in Barcelona.