Kings and Knights

We have made a fantastic start to our new topic; 'Kings and Knights'. We are already two parts in to the epic 'The Lady of Shalott' and have all been speculating about the curse that might be upon her. We rose to the challenge of writing the opening of the poem as prose. Can you remember the difference between poetry and prose? This week, we're looking forward to reading more and finding out what happens next!

To try to empathise with the Lady of Shalott, we each attempted our own mirror artwork and found it very tempting to look round at what was behind us! It was very frustrating and gave us a little insight into what her life must have been like. We wrote diary entries as the Lady and imagined how she must feel and what she might dream of.

We also had a go at weaving this week; the favourite pastime of the Lady. It was tricky at first, but we created some marvellous pieces with a little practice!

On Friday, we had a formal debate on the topic, 'The Lady of Shalott should leave the tower.'
Arguing 'for' were Delta Team (made up of Tiger and Panther houses) and 'against' were L.J. Masterminds (Lion and Jaguar houses). It was a tense and well-argued debate, with many interesting points and rebuttals. The opening statements set the debate off on an interesting path and we were soon in full flow. Following some very persuasive closing statements, the judges deliberated. It was a close call, but as a result of using better evidence from the poem, the winning team were the Delta Team. Well done! After our debate, we wrote letters of advice to the Lady of Shalott, full of the powerful arguments we had shared in the debate. Coming up soon we will be reading more of the poem and starting to learn about Edward the Confessor, Arthurian legends and much more...!

A Day in Camelot!

Today, we have spent much of our day in Camelot! We created our own knights and wrote letters from King Arthur, to explain why they had been chosen to join the Knights of the Round Table and to tell them about the quest they needed to go on.

 By Darcy

 By D

By Jack N.

Some of us wrote such fabulous letters that we were crowned ourselves!

Later in the morning, we read the fourth and final part of 'The Lady of Shalott'- it was a tragic but powerful ending. Mrs Parrott was blown away by our poetry analysis- we identified that the song she sang linked to the funeral songs she heard in Part One. We decided that her white robes had lots of connotations (our new favourite word!)- they made us think of purity, innocence, religious robes, an angel or Jesus- because he was also an innocent person who was killed. We also made a connection to the Bible by noticing that when she died the skies turned black and there was a storm, just like Good Friday. We thought that the darkening skies were definitely a clue that something bad was coming.

The Lady of Shalott, Waterhouse. Source: wikipedia

Then, we looked closely at the structure of Tennyson's 'The Lady of Shalott'. We counted the lines in each verse and noticed the rhyme patterns and repeated phrases. Next, Mrs Parrott challenged us to identify how many syllables or beats were in each line.

We found that the general pattern was:

8

8   The first four lines rhyme.

8

8

7   Ending in 'Camelot'

8

8   The next three lines rhyme.

8

6   Usually, 'The Lady of Shalott'

We used this structure to work together to write our own verse for the poem:

The tower beneath a clouded coat,

In the mirror she spied a boat,

She ran down to the willow’d moat,

Upon the prow, her name she wrote,

She floated to tower’d Camelot.

With her dying breaths she started to sing,

Her mournful song, heard by the King,

She died without a knight or ring;

The Lady of Shalott.

By St. Clare’s Class

   

Finally, we had a try at writing our own verses-

 it was a very tricky challenge! 

 By Francis

 By Elizabeth

 By Mina

By Finn

Kings, Knights and the Lady of Shalott!

Last week, we began our new topic- we have started our adventure in Camelot!

We read the first two parts of Tennyson's 'The Lady of Shalott' and considered what the Lady's life is like. Here is some marvellous writing from St. Clare's last week (remember to click on the pictures to make them larger and easier to read):

 By Francis

 By Harry

 By Amelie F.

 By Amelie M.

By Rory

We even did some drawing, using a mirror to look behind us. We wanted to see how it must feel for the Lady of Shalott...

There are many more adventures to come this week!