On World Book Day years 1-6 worked together in the hall to develop their non-fiction writing using the 'Grammar Rainbow' created by Jane Considine. This followed on from our Fiction Writing Morning in November.

 

We began the session by sharing our World Book Day costumes, then played some concentration and coordination games to get our brains moving.

 

We again took the fairy tale of 'Goldilocks and the Three Bears' as our inspiration, but this time, instead of writing our own version of the story, we were to become newspaper reporters and write a newspaper report.

 

First we listened to the story, and then we split into small mixed age groups and were challenged to write a quick report about the story. It was very interesting to see what we already knew about report writing, and to see how difficult it is not to just retell the story.

 

We then used real newspaper reports to look at example headlines, including those that use puns, then we used the Grammar Rainbow to help us brainstorm headlines for our reports. We then chose our favourite one for each group.

 

After a quick break, we came back to practise adding detail to sentences using the grammar rainbow. We looked at adding adverbs, and how these can be moved around the sentence. We also added adjectives. Then we looked at how to use subordinate clauses to add more detail.

 

Finally we worked together in our groups to rewrite our reports, this time making sure they were definitely reports, not stories! You should be able to spot the change in language, the opening sentence, clear headline and quotes.

 

You can see both our first and final attempts on the powerpoint in the gallery. http://www.extonschool.co.uk/gallery/

 

It was a great morning, and the staff again enjoyed learning alongside the children. It was lovely to see older children supporting younger children, and everyone working together to produce some fantastic work.