Week 5

How To Catch A Star

What is a Star?

Stars are huge, glowing balls of gases. The closest star to Earth is the Sun. Most of the pinpricks of light that shine in the night sky are also stars. Countless more stars are too far from Earth to be seen without a telescope. Most stars are incredibly far away.

Stars are found in huge groups called galaxies. The Sun and its solar system, including Earth, are part of the Milky Way galaxy. That galaxy alone contains hundreds of billions of stars. There are many billions of galaxies in the universe.

Nearly all stars are made up mostly of a gas called hydrogen. A star’s core is very hot. Great pressure squeezes the core, causing some of the hydrogen to change into a gas called helium. This process produces huge amounts of energy and makes the star shine.

This week we are going to be writing a set of instructions for 'How To Catch A Star.'

Activity 2:

Before we can write instructions for how to catch one, we will need to learn a little bit about stars. To begin, watch this short video below. Write down the facts that you learn in full sentences. You might like to do some additional research, to find out your own facts. Remember your sentences need to begin with a capital letter and end with a full stop. Handwriting is very important too, so don't rush. If you would like to add some pictures too, please do.

Tuesday 2nd February

We are going to be using the story 'How to Catch a Star' by Oliver Jeffers as the stimulus for our next set of instructions. The story has a repetitive structure and offers up lots of suggestions for how somebody might catch a star, and what they might need. Before we convert this text from a story to instructions, I would like you to learn the story.

Activity 2:

Watch/listen to the recorded version of the story (below). Use the story map to support you as you verbally re-tell the story. 

Activity 3:

Correctly sequence the pictures from the story and write an accurately punctuated sentence to go with each picture.

Wednesday 3rd February

Activity 2:

The structure of a story is different to that of instructions. Here is an instruction map using the information taken from the story.

Using the boxed-up planning grid below, organise and write out this information as a set of instructions.

Thursday 4th February

You guys have done an amazing job so far at writing instructions, including lots of the important features. So today I thought that we would have a little bit of a break from the writing side of things as we launch ourselves in to the 'Invention' phase. Now, there will be a little bit of writing involved today, but this is largely your planning, generating ideas, making notes and drawing any diagrams day. 

In the 'Invention' phase, we use the set of instructions that we are familiar with as a scaffold to write our own 'How to Catch... instructions. So if not a star, then what? 

* A flying saucer *

*A shooting Star or Meteor *

* An Alien *

* A Comet *

These are your instructions, so you get to decide. The first thing you will need to do is draw out all your ideas. Then you will find down below that I have included a boxed up plan template for your notes, as well as a checklist of instruction features.