Teaching Notes

Hello everyone,

Below are some useful tips to help with lessons this week.

Spelling Activities

Monday: Write the definition for each of your spellings. You can use your dictionary from school or a computer to help you.

Tuesday: Pick two activities from the spelling menu. A picture of the spelling menu can be found in the teaching notes section.

Wednesday: Write an interesting sentence for each of your spellings. Remember to use lots of interesting adjectives and phrases.

Thursday: Use the look, cover, write and check part of your spelling sheet to revise spellings.

Friday: Test on your spellings.

Grammar Activity - Monday

Today’s grammar activity is based on personification. Below are some useful tips to help with today’s task.

 What is personification?

Children in Key Stage 2 start to think about how writers use figurative language to create effect in their writing. One type of figurative language is personification, which is giving an object human characteristics (emotions, sensations, speech, physical movements).

Examples of personification for children

The cruel waves crashed mercilessly and swallowed the poor swimmer.
Here, the writer describes the waves using human attributes, 'cruel' and 'merciless'. The waves are also given a human physical process, swallowing, when waves cannot literally swallow something.

Personification is also used in everyday sayings, for example:

Those flowers are crying out for water.
This expression is designed to tell us that the flowers need watering, but it implies the flowers have a voice. It also makes the sentence quite emotional, perhaps as a way of conveying urgency (someone needs to do something about the flowers quickly!).

London is a city that never sleeps.
This expression tells us that London is a city that is lively all the time. A city cannot literally be awake or asleep, but the expression tells us something about the people who live in the city and their activities, and how they characterise a city.

There are two PowerPoint presentations to help with the learning of personification.

Talking and Listening - Tuesday

Today’s task is talking and listening.  There will be a different number of tasks. These tasks have a prompt to start either a debate or conversation. This is a great opportunity for your child to talk with family members about different topics, express their opinion and work on their listening skills. 

Punctuation Activity - Wednesday

Today’s punctuation activity is based on revising speech marks. Highlight what is being said and this will help when adding the speech marks.

Follow the use of speech marks PowerPoint to help revise the use of speech marks. 

Below is a link which explains when to use speech marks or inverted commas as they are also called:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/supermovers/ks2-english-inverted-commas-with-mr-smith/z62rhbk

Creative Writing - Thursday

Over the next while we will have one focus on our writing. This piece of writing will be based on an island. Each week you will be given a different task to link to your creative writing. You should have completed a drawing of your island! Here is the next piece of work. Follow the help sheet for some ideas.

Week 2

How did you get to your island? Write about your arrival, explaining who you are with and how you got there. Try to think of an interesting and unusual way to arrive. 

Watch Episode 1 of Treasure Island:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/class-clips-video/english-ks2-treasure-island-home/zk2qnrd

Comprehension and Handwriting - Friday 

Comprehension

This week’s comprehension task is based on our topic, Natural Disasters. Remember when completing a comprehension:

1. Read the passage

2. Read the questions

2. Read the passage and highlight important information

3. Answer the questions 

 Handwriting

This is an opportunity to revisit joined up writing. Pick one of the pieces of writing and copy it using joined up writing. Below is a link to remind children about the letter formation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NQ6uS8blwY