Week 5

Week 5

Thursday 4th February

Cock-A-Doodle-Doo, good morning from me to you!

Excellent efforts on your Contents and Glossary pages yesterday. Can you see how William's autobiography is magically transforming into a non-fiction book? Each paragraph of information has been carefully thought through and ordered to help us (the reader) along on a journey of fact discovery.

When texts are written, they include ideas that tell us something. Stories (fiction books) have imaginative events and characters. Non-fiction books share real-life information. We know now that this might be through:

paragraphs (a group of full sentences about one topic)
pictures and photographs
captions (a few words or a short phrase)
labels
even headings say a lot!

Task 1: I have made you a Quizmaster's Question Time as a special treat. It is all about features of a non-fiction text, can you remember them all AND beat the clock? Grab your book and pencil and off you go!

Reception, we are of course NOT expecting you to write all the features (ditto to Year 1's in a panic; this is meant to be a super fun warm-up game so you are most welcome to try one of the other methods below)

Can you say the features out loud?
Write the initial sound/letter?
Ask a grown up to write the features out on post-its for you before you start, then use your growing reading skills to search for the correct one each time?

Task 2: You have worked extra hard this week with your detective skills; hunting, spotting, digging for information. Now it is time for some deep diving and delving as we are going to test reading comprehension; checking what you understand when you read. The facts might be easy to pull out of the text or need you to think and work out an answer. Like in school, please answer every question in FULL SENTENCES. Just a reminder... you cannot start a sentence with 'because' (or cos!) .

You will need to keep checking William's autobiography to help you find the information needed in your answers. I have highlighted some key words to help you. Good Luck!

Reading Comprehension

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Wednesday 3rd February

Hoopla hoopla, here we go!

Crikeysaurus, I had no idea how brilliant your detective skills were - yesterday you spotted SOOOOO many pronouns and your explanations were 'spot' on too! An autobiography is filled with 'I...my...we...' because it is an information text written by a person about THEMSELVES.

Task 1: As a quick recap through your 'William' books, I would like you to create a:

CONTENTS PAGE

Ooh, I hear you cry, but how?!

Well, a contents page shows you what information is coming up on each page of a non-fiction book. Now you have headings, it is super easy to see what each page is all about.

First, you need to number your pages - I wonder where page numbers should go? (check a real book).
Write a list (new information, new line) of all the headings in your book.
Add the page number that matches each heading at the end of the same line.
Make sure you include the special title/heading at the top: Contents Page

Task 2: Is going to speed us to the very opposite end of our non-fiction text! We are heading to the:

GLOSSARY

Can you remember what that is?

The glossary is a list (another one!) of words and their meanings.

Do you think we would include EVERY word in here? NOOOO, it would be terribly long.
Would you add words like 'the...and...it'? No, you're right again, we wouldn't.
How about 'terraced house'? YES! Some readers might not know what a terraced house is. Do you?

Have another read through William's autobiography. This time use a different colour highlighter or pencil and hunt out AT LEAST 10 words (or phrases) that you didn't understand the first time you heard them.

First, find out what they mean! This information is super important today .
Write a list (new information, new line) of each word/phrase you find.
Include a colon - two full stops, one on top of the other like this : after each glossary word. This shows that your explanation is coming.
Then write a simple sentence to explain to your reader what the word/phrase means.
Don't forget that all important title/heading! GLOSSARY

Here is a sneak preview from one of our Oxford Owl books, to help you remember what a real glossary looks like. You could always start your task by having a read through a real glossary or two for inspiration!

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Tuesday 2nd February

Morning, William. Morning, friends!

Great work yesterday with William's autobiography, I hope you found it interesting. We had a wonderful array of zig zag books bouncing from our screens and it certainly looked like you all really understood what William was trying to explain.

Task 1: William's autobiography does look super long when you first look at it, but when you split it up into book pages, it makes it a lot more manageable. Each of those segments that we put on a page were called paragraphs. Did you notice that each paragraph was about something different?

I wonder if you could think of a title/heading for each of your zig zag pages? Let me give you an example:

This paragraph is all about William's grandmas and grandads, so we could use the heading: Grandparents

Write your headings at the top of each page (just like in a real non-fiction book) and you could even write in a thick pen and use a ruler to underline them so they stand out.

Task 2: Time for some deeper detective digging, magnifying glasses at the ready...we are going on a pronoun hunt!

Hang on, WHAT IS a pronoun?

A pronoun is a word used instead of a noun (naming word) so we don't have to keeeeeeeep repeating the same name. Look at William's first paragraph. It reads very differently if there are no pronouns:

William's name is William Zhang. William is six years old. William was born on 25th September 2013. William lives with William's mum, dad and sister Sophie in a terraced house. William's family live in an area called Crosspool. Crosspool is in Sheffield.

This paragraph has become long and very repetitive, I could almost fall asleeeee... Woah, that was close! Pronouns clearly are useful, there seem to have been A LOT used in just the first paragraph. Are you ready with your counting fingers? It is time to get spotting.

Hunt out every pronoun you can see in William's whole autobiography - draw a circle around them, use a highlighter pen or underline with different colours
Use the table below to record a tally chart every time you see each of the pronouns - MAKE SURE you mark them on the correct side
Once you have ALL of the pronouns recorded, count your tallies and write in your totals

What do you notice about the numbers in each side?
Are there more in the 'I, we, me...' column or 'he, she...'?
Why do you think this is? What can you tell about autobiographies from this? Year 1, can you write your thoughts in a full sentence?

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Monday 1st February

Happy new month everyone . Fresh month, fresh start, fresh Literacy!

Last week we explored non-fiction books and learnt all the different features, picking them out of a variety of books and storing them up in our zig zags ready for next week. This sandwich week in the middle is where we are going to discover more about a particular kind of non-fiction text. It is called an:

autobiography

Task 1: We will be learning WHAT an autobiography is as the week goes on, before then we need to get to know the word itself.

How do you SAY autobiography? Can you say it loudly/quietly/in a squeaky voice/like a giant or a troll??
How do you WRITE and SPELL the word? Write the sounds you hear and compare to the real spelling, which letters are correct? Are there any strange letters included in the real spelling? Try the 'look, cover, write, check' method to see if you can memorise it. Reception, chill your boots on this one .
How could you ACTION the word? Ronnie M did a brilliant job of inventing actions to help him remember the key features - can you compete with his creativity this week?

TASK 2: I have an awesome little friend and his name is William. William very kindly wrote his autobiography for me and said I could share it with you. I told you he was great! Here is a short excerpt (the whole text is ready for you to download below). Have a little read (or listen while someone to reads it to you), then close your eyes and see if you can find William inside your mind - did you see him? Take a photo in your head and keep it safe, William is going to be with us all week so you'll need to remember who he is!

I wonder if you have already started to guess what an autobiography is about, does and is written for. I know your detective skills are strong so you may have guessed even before this lesson has finished!

Your task today, to help you get to know William and his autobiography, is to transform his writing into a ZIG ZAG BOOK! (You must be a pro at folding by now).

William has 8 paragraphs of information in his autobiography so your zig zig book will need 8 pages.
Cut and stick one paragraph segment at the bottom of each page (see below).
Draw a picture on each page that shows what each paragraph is about (plus lots of colours, please).
You don't need a front or back cover, contents page or any of the other features we learnt last week .

You can choose to make a mini or tall zig zag, or even a full-on book if you fancy extending yourself. I will be fascinated to see how your books turn out and how similar they are to each other. Do you think they will be?