A Fabulous Final Week!

Thank you, St. Clare's, for giving me such a wonderful last week before I leave for maternity leave! We worked hard this week and we were so happy to welcome the fantastic Mrs Bennett into our St. Clare's team. I know you're going to make her very welcome.

We've been continuing with our Kings and Knights topic this week. Mrs Bennett worked with you to create these spectacular crowns. We were so impressed by how different they all were!

You made some super fact files about Edward the Confessor. You'll be learning lots more about him and his interesting life in the next few weeks, including a fabulous trip to Westminster Abbey. It's one of my favourite trips in Year 5- you're going to love it! I can't wait to hear all about it.

We read Part III of 'The Lady of Shalott' this week, in which we met the dashing Sir Lancelot. We worked together to write this fantastic description of the knight:

Here are just a few examples of some of the excellent writing from St. Clare's this week (click on the pictures to make them larger and easier to read):

On Wednesday, we showed Mrs Bennett how fantastic you are at poetry. Inspired by the moment that the Lady of Shalott looks out of the window and triggers her curse, we wrote this very dramatic poem. Can you spot some similes? Metaphors? Alliteration? Onomatopoeia? Can you find all the references to the poem we were inspired by, The Lady of Shalott?

The Curse

Dark clouds cloaked the sky like velvet,

Lightning tore through the coal,

She heard thunder crash upon the tower,

The air was filled with a deafening sound,

Rain lashed upon her trembling soul.

Crash! The mirror shattered into a million pieces,

Splinters flew like shooting stars,

A hurricane of glass and the web flew out of the casement.

A foreboding feeling enveloped her,

A scream of despair.

By St. Clare’s Class

Wednesday 11th January 2017

We also enjoyed our last P4C lesson together this week. Our stimulus was this beautiful short animation:

The questions we came up with were:
1. Can old things be as good as new? Why?
2. Should all people be treated the same? Why?
3. Can you still have happiness, even when you are unfortunate? Why?
4. How can we make life better?
5. What would the world be like if rubbish took over?

We voted to discuss question 3; Can you still have happiness, even when you are unfortunate? Why?
Our discussion included homelessness, the value of money, fairness, happiness and even communism! I shall miss our Philosophy discussions!

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...!

World War One

Take a look at some of the beautiful artwork on these front covers. I can see that a huge amount of effort went into creating these fantastic covers- which will make anyone that picks up your project excited to read on!

In this week of Remembrance, we have been working hard learning more about The Great War. Yesterday, we looked in detail at Wilfred Owen's 'Dulce et Decorum Est'. We analysed the techniques he used and then illustrated some of the lines to show what we understood them to mean.

Today, inspired by Wilfred Owen, we wrote a beautiful poem of remembrance as a class:

Your War, Our Fight

We were the living, we are the dead,

Below the crosses our bodies lie,

Upon the blood-red poppies, dropped shells from above,

In our dreams, they still reach for us.

Watching our brothers die, we struggled on,

Drowning for your freedom,

We thought we would be heroes and yet we perished,

Now we lie beneath the mud, on which we fought your war.

We loved, but love no more,

Families weep receiving tragic telegrams,

Those who loved us; love us more.

The poppies grow above our hearts, which hold the Lie they told us,

Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori.

By, St. Clare’s Class

Thursday 10^th November 2016

Happy National Poetry Day!

We have had a lovely day today celebrating National Poetry Day! We found quotations from famous poems all around the school- can you remember any? Which was your favourite?

This afternoon, we wrote our own poem! We worked as a class on a poem train- writing one line, then passing it on to a classmate.

Here's the fabulous final poem:

Haunted Forest

The forest was as dark as an ebony dragon,

Splish! Splash! Splosh! The rain poured down,

Bang! Crash! Stones hit the ground and cracked in half,

Suddenly lava started to pour out, it was horrific,

All the dragons started to leave the country,

They were all scared of the Lava,

Bang crash the conkers fell off the trees,

The trees started to fall down,                                           

The wolves were running from the trees scared and shivering as they run,

All of a sudden it went silent,

Then the noise of trees creaking,

Everywhere there was lava- I had to get out of there,

Then suddenly… whoosh! A ghastly ghost emerged from the lava,

How can I escape?

I looked back but an army of ghosts were behind me I searched for a wat to get out,

Scary and goulish the forest was,

The trees fell as I looked back,

A tree which looked like a bear,

Its arms were creaking out towards me,

Lumps and monstrous eyes,

Birds flapping their wings,

The moonlit sky above me, I feel a cool breeze blow past,

Under a green mossy tree, a flock of birds screech by,

I heard a scream and stumbled,

Tree twigs fell to the muddy ground,

I’d never seen anything like it before,

The creatures started to approach,

Something grabbed me as I sank into the ground.

By, St. Clare's Class, 6/10/16

Powerful Poetry!

Today, we have been writing more wonderful poetry. We spent some time analysing William Blake's 'The Tyger'.

Source: nassrgrads

The children were able to identify some complex ideas demonstrated in the poem- they discussed Blake's use of metaphors and the connotations of the words he used and why he might have chosen particular combinations. We looked at the rhyme scheme, which led to some impressive linguistic detective work- we realised that the pronunciation of some words in English must have changed since 1794, when the poem was written.


Inspired by Blake, we wrote our own poem about a dangerous animal- the wolf:

Wolf, Wolf, Stalking Death

(After William Blake)

Are you sure you are as frightening as a yeti?

Wicked wolf, eyes piercing through the dark like fireflies illuminating the void,

Its bold grey-coated fur shining in the obscured moonlight,

Creeping silently, covered in pearl white snow, invisible to others,

The blood-thirsty phantom looming through the night forest,

Ravenous beast stalking his fated prey.

The powerful hound dancing with the wind,

Panting with mighty breath, as warm as the logs on the burning fire.

Death-defying animal from the wild, rapidly dashing through the haunted dark forest,

Rattling the sound barrier with its desperate howl,

Its hopeless prey crying out, like a baby without its mum, to its pack,

The blood-curdling beast cloaks its prey,

As fierce as a hyena, the wolf takes a pounce and grabs on with his claws.

Are you as deadly as a Widow Spider? 

By St. Clare's Class

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

Our Class Poem

Yesterday, we returned to The Battle of the Somme. We imagined being at the battle, then used a zone of relevance diagram to sort which adjectives would be best to describe the experience.

Then, we worked with our house teams to write some lines of poetry about the battle. We especially tried to include Mrs Parrott's favourite poetic features; metaphors, similes, onomatopoeia, alliteration and repetition.

Next, we worked together to choose an order for the lines to go, to make a poem.

Finally, we broke the poem into verses and added the punctuation we needed. The last step was to add a title for our masterpiece!

Here is our final poem:

Running With Blood

Sharp-eyed soldiers,

The pain within trapped like a fly in a spider’s web,

My boots, my boots, they sink into the sucking mud,

The lice bite into your skin like a jaguar chomps into its prey,

Rats devouring flesh hungrily,

My feet tremble as I see people drunk with fatigue.

The bullet hunts me like I am its prey…

Several shocking shells were out to kill me.

BOOM, CRACK, CRASH go the frightening shells as shadows fall behind them,

Shrapnel flying through the sky, killing soldiers as they fly,

Shells more colossal than gigantic elephants,

Bullets as sharp as knives.

Dead mean dropping like autumn leaves,

Bang flash! Everything goes black.

Death comes to greet me like an old friend…

By St. Clare’s Class

Thursday 3^rd December 2015