Literacy
Our first outcome for this half term was a poem based on 'The River' by Valerie Bloom. To write our poems, we learnt about:
- Personification
- Similes
- Metaphors
- Alliteration
We then wrote a formal letter to the Mayor in objection to the council building a coal mine on top of Mapplewell Park. We practiced using:
- Emotive language to get our point across
- Formal language, including not using apostrophes
- Commas to add extra information to a sentence
- Prefix words spelt correctly
LIRA
Our first book was 'The Biggest Footprint' by Rob and Tom Sears. It explores what the world would look like if all of the 8 billion humans were 'smooshed' together into one giant mega human! We loved exploring this story and the language the authors chose to use.
Our next text was 'The Witches' by Roald Dahl. We practiced making lots of inferences using the beginning of the book where Roald Dahl introduces witches to the reader.
Topic
This half term, our topic has been all about Coal Mining with a focus on History. To hook us into our new topic, we took a trip to the National Coal Mining Museum!
During our topic, we explored ...
- What is coal and coal mining
- Using sources to research coal mining in Barnsley
- Who was Margaret Thatcher
- Who was Arthur Scargill
- Comparisons of the two significant figures
- Chronology of key events in the Miners' Strike
- How did the closure of mines influence Barnsley today
RSHE
Our RSHE focus has been on Relationships. We explored what bullying means and how this can affect people, how we keep positive relationships when interacting online, how we should respond to unknown adults in different situations, who to talk to if we feel unsafe, the names of different parts of our body, and what changes boys and girls go through as they grow up.