John – Liss: Year 6

Lunar Theme Park Adverts

In ICT we have been working on creating spreadsheets for our own Lunar Theme Parks. This has involved calculating the cost of construction and daily running costs balanced against income from admission charges and spending at shops, cafes and vending machines. The children had to calculate an effective admission charge to attract new customers and were also given the option of creating adverts, through a variety of media, which their peers would then judge. Today Lily, Charlotte, Emma, Susie, Katie, Laura & John ( both publisher files) all made their adverts which can be downloaded below.

Theme Park Advert Laura

Lily & Charlotte Theme Park Advert

Emma Theme Park Advert

Susie & Katie Theme Park Advert radio

John’s Leaflet for Lunar park

All good things come to those who wait – Letters from Kafuro

On Thursday we were visited by Johan & Peter Welsh, who gave a presentation to the Lower School before giving a talk to the whole school at assembly time. They had brought back with them a short film about Kafuro which the children will watch one day during assembly time. They also brought back replies to letters that the children had written two years ago when they were in Class BG. There was a great deal of excitement when the letters were handed out and the children look forward to sending replies when Mr Stanley goes out to Kafuro at the end of July. PDFs of the letters are attached below.

Wenlock’s busy weekend

Wenlock has had an extremely active weekend. While Mandeville was off with the school cross – country team, Wenlock has been to tennis with John and Susie at Newman Collard (he had a taster session) and then on to cricket coaching with John at Liss Cricket Club (near the Spread Eagle). Surely Mandeville can’t fit more into his weekend than this?

Tankas

A Tanka is a 31 syllable poem from Japan. It has a syllabic structure of 5,7,5,7,7. We studied several examples before deciding to write our own. The children worked in groups and showed considerable skill in adapting to this new form of poetry. There are several great examples for you to read..

Cameron

Despair

Despair is darkness

Bullying you on purpose

Chaos it creates

Fighting back is the true way

Destroying you bit by bit

Madeline

Flying

A beautiful dream.

That is what it has to be.

Flying is amazing.

I would like to fly forever.

This has to be a lovely dream.

Eve

Flying

I am in the air

Not sure what I am doing

Feeling scared but safe

Stuck in a magical world

Filled with the best surprises

John

Despair

Don’t know what to do

The cuts of sadness don’t heal

Engulfed in blackness

I feel as if I’ve been drained

I dream of nothing but evil

Lily

Despair.

A bad feeling sinks

Stains my heart with dark despair

Bad news runs through me

Like an old electric wire

That sticking feeling, despair.

Poetry – The Woods

This week in literacy we have been looking at a a range of poems about woods, all with different rhyming patterns. We have also investigated simile, metaphor, alliteration and assonance, personification and onomatopoeia.

We gathered together a stockpot of words, then we drafted poems and checked them with our response partners before producing the final poems. Here’s the first few with more to follow.

Elyse

Dark Woods

I stumble through the darkening forest

Mist lingers in the eerie gloom

Shadows watch my every foot step

Cast down by the ghostly full moon

I feel my heart pounding in my chest

Gnarled roots block my every path

Silence pins me down like daggers

Encouraged by a monstrous laugh

Tall trees tower above me

Like long crooked hands

Creaking in the howling wind

Giants from faraway lands.

Lily

The Wood

I walk through the wood in a breeze

The frost biting my fingers

With freezing achy knees.

The creepy shadows chasing me

I scream and scream but no one can hear

I sand a still as a statue but I want to flee.

Scaring myself half to death

My heart pounding furiously

Trying to catch my breath.

I walk through a forbidden area

I step on a twig, CRACK!

The foul owl is just making it scarier.

Katie

Walking through the wood

I stagger through the foggy wood

Not able to see through the pitch black night

I’m longing to be snuggled in my bed

Than having this horrible fright

The towering trees are odd figures

Reaching out to hold me back

Dark shadows follow my every move

Trying to push me off the track.

Snap, creak, there’s something near

I don’t dare to look behind me

An awful stench fills my nose with coal

Right now I feel like I want to flee.

The moon above me gives me an icy glare

Just like it thinks I’m bad

Terrible trenches lie ahead

Right now I don’t feel like being sad.

Will R

The Woods.

Walking through the wood at night

The eerie trees watch me

Giving me a fright.

It’s like walking through a ghost town

Every step is like a bomb going off

I’m only in my gown.

Crick crack as I go over the bridge

I hope it doesn’t break

It is as cold as a fridge.

Madeline

The way through the woods

I walk through the creepy trees

And branches try to grab me

And things doing evil deeds

It is as if I’m blind, but they can see

Something claps,

I spin around

I see nothing, not even some trees

And I can’t hear a sound

Horrid hands hold my hair,

I look to see,

And as I do, my T-Shirt tears

But it is just a tree.

The awful noises make me scream

I fall to the ground

I want it to be a dream,

And I cower as the noises pound

Elias

The Wood Poem.

I’m in a freaky forest, trees are trying to grab me,

The leaves are crunching on the ground,

As quiet as ants swiftly striding,

I am nowhere to be found.

I tiptoe carefully across the mulching muddy floor,

Doom has caught me in a sack,

As scary as a clown in a circus,

It has all turned pitch BLACK!

Bushes rustle like they are alive!

The moon has a funnily luminous light,

Twigs explode like deadly dynamite, BANG!

I am bound to get a fright…………………….(cliffhanger)

Emily

The Wood

As I walk along the forest path

The night closes around me

Mysterious eyes watching every step I take

Shadows dashing in between trees

The wind howls like a wolf

And fear makes you want to flee

Hearing sounds that give me a fright

And the frost bites my knees

I stumble out the woods

Running as quick as I can

Terrified to look back

Not having any time to think of a plan

John

The Dark Woods

Stumbling through the shadows of the Dark Woods

The moon tries to show me the path

But the trees cover me, a gnarled hood

The eerie trees are too spine-chilling

So I look to the skies, as dark as coal,

I think that this could be a movie, quite thrilling

I know I cannot linger

Surrounded by the terrible trees

With the frost eating me away, finger by frozen finger

The trees creaking in the darkness

I creep through the clearing leaves rustling under my feet

With eyes staring out at me, heartless

Will W

The way through the woods

I walk along the dirty path

In the woods at night

The freaky trees are coming closer

Which give me a fright.

The icy wind freezes my fingers

And also my toes

The foul owl is sitting silently

Now the frost is freezing my nose.

The creepy creatures are casting shadows

I can now hear a crunch

But I want to go home now

I WANT MY LUNCH!!!

Jake

The dark Woods

I run alone in the damaged road

I scuttle under a tree like mice

Every step crunching twigs

My hands are cold as ice.

Scratch, squeal, beware the bats

I swim in a river like when I go to the Taro

The crack crackling as dead trees fall

And foxes go to their burrows.

The swaying trees stalk me

And shadows are in shapes like oblongs

The thorns prickle me

As I stroll along.

Cameron

The wood

Frozen darkness with eyes of despair

Surrounding you from every direction

Picking on you with sharp spiky thorns

Choosing you for an ominous election

Trees throwing down twigs of dynamite

Flowers planting mines instead of seeds

A snake covered path for you to follow

Getting you to do dark deeds

Hide yourself under some shadows

Shadows grab you like shadow covered quick sand

Getting dragged down to your dark death

Waiting for a good shadow to give you a hand

There’s no way out of this dark wood

It’s dreaded hands blocking all ways out

Trees that look at you with fiery eyes

The dark wood dark and dead without a doubt

It’s a never ending path like walking around a dark world

Eve

The wood

As I enter my way

Through the dark and misty wood

I hear the haunting sway

I start to get an unknown feeling

The cold and dark one,

“You have me on my knees kneeling!”

I start to walk further and further

I feel a piercing dagger making its way in,

Like I’m being murdered

I start to run as fast as I can

I trip over a twig pulling me

I want to be picked up by a van

Then I start to make my way out

I run faster and faster,

And as soon as I do I SHOUT!

Alex M

The way through the woods

I walk in the misty wood,

At seven hours past noon

Tossing and turning around icy trees

I’m expecting some gloom.

The trees with moss on,

Look like some doom

Trudging through the muddy path,

Leaves some shadows from the moon.

When the air is like a freezer,

I see a big black bat

It comes swooping towards me

Almost knocking me flat.

Limericks

Today we have been reading limericks in Literacy. We studied the features of a range of limericks. This includes 8 syllables in the first line, lines 1, 2 & 5 rhyming and also lines 3 & 4 rhyming. When we had finished reading some examples, we composed two limericks as a class before creating our own individual limericks.

Class Limericks

There was a Scotsman named Andy

Who adored eating pink candy.

When his teeth began to rot,

He ate a bowl of snot

And washed it down with strong brandy

There once was a man on the moon

Who loved to watch cartoons.

His eyes turned square

And he lost his hair,

And now people think he’s a loon.

Red Group

There was a man with a spoon

Who ate a piece of the moon

Not satisfied with that

He ate his hat

And blew up like a balloon

A farmer, Bill, was an egg man

His wife cracked him open in a bed pan

She scrambled his brains

And sautéed his veins

And used them to build a wigwam

Abi P

Mad Anne

There was a mad women called Anne,

Who drived a bright golden van,

She crashed it twice,

Both weren’t that nice,

And that’s why she’s called Mad Anne.

Lily

Baby baboon

There once was a baby baboon

Who wanted to visit the moon

Instead he went to Mars

Ate lots of chocolate bars

Now people say he`s back too soon

Elyse’s Limericks

Mad Pam

There was an old lady called Pam

And her favourite food was ham

She killed a pig

And ate a fig

And fell in love with a lamb

Dead Ned

There was once a boy called Ned

Who never got out of bed

A crow pecked his knee

Which made him flee

And in the morning he was dead.

Emma

Can, the silly man

There once was a man called Can,

who hit his head with a frying pan.

so he got a lump,

That he called Mr Bump.

Then went and crashed his red van!

Elias

Multi- tasking Bob.

There was a young swimmer called Bob,

He had a very long lob,

At school he was y popular,

He liked to look through binoculars,

But now he is a massive slob.

Susie

Jerry, the berry man.

There once was a man called Jerry,

who liked to eat lots of red berries.

So one day he went

To Tesco and spent

His money on all the cherries.

Oliver

My dog used to be called Spotty

Even if he wasn’t dotty

But one day I said, ‘Wow!’

And he turned into a cow

So now I call him Motty

John

There once was a dude with blue hair

Who liked his steak extra rare

He ate his fill

Then got a chill

So instead he ate a brown bear

Katie

There was a boy called Rooney

Whose favourite actor was George Clooney

He was very dumb

And always drank rum

And that’s why he is a loony

Abi E

There once was a man with a spoon

Who wanted to watch a cartoon

His head went bare

He got a balloon from a fair

And now people think he’s a loon.

Ancient Greek Non – Chronological Report: John

The first Olympics was in 776 BC to honour the king god Zeus; from then on it was held every 4 years in Olympia, Greece

Attendance

No married women were aloud to watch or even (except for the powerful priestess of diyonisis for without her the games could not take place) and even non-married women were looked down upon. Even though these measures were put in place slaves and non- Greek men were admitted.

Competitors

Only High status (naked) Greek men were aloud to compete. The punishment for a woman competitor was being thrown off of the tallest cliff, but one woman was spared because her brothers, father and son did so well.

The Events

The first sport was running, the track was 129m. Like the modern games there was more than one run: The stade (one lap), the dialous (two laps) and the dolichos (20-24 laps). As the games evolved more sports were introduced, one of these was chariot racing, this was a scene of as many as 40 chariots with 2 -4 horses bolting around 2 posts in the ground, so as you would imagine there were often collisions. But the most gruelling event was the pentathlon with 5 of the Olympic sports; running, wrestling, discus, jumping and the javelin throw. This was designed to find the best all round athlete.

As old as the hills, the Olympics is the oldest and most important competition. The modern Olympics started in 1896 similar in many ways to the ancient games and will carry on for much longer the next in London then in Rio de Janeiro

Theseus & the Minotaur – The Dance

This term in dance we have been looking at Theseus and the Minotaur. Each week we have created, practised and evaluated a different part of the dance, then today we put it all together and performed it as a whole.

There are six scenes to the dance:
1) King Aegeus choosing the victims for the Minotaur
2) The journey across the sea to Crete
3) Entering the labyrinth
4) Fighting the Minotaur
5) Exiting the labyrinth and leaving Ariadne on Naxos
6) Returning home and the suicide of Aegeus.

The children worked in four groups:
1) Alex M, Oliver, Alex C, Jack, Josh NB, Elias and Cameron
2) Elyse, Katie, Lily, Kirsten, Charlotte, Susie, Abi E and Abi P
3) Will R, Will C, Will W, James, Ben, Harry, Korban and Jake
4) John, Emma, Madeleine, Lucy, Eve, Josh F, Georgina and Emily

All files can be played with Quicktime

Theseus & the Minotaur Group 1
Theseus & the Minotaur Group 2
Theseus & The Minotaur Group 3
Theseus & the Minotaur Group 4

Wooden Horse of Troy Newspaper reports

The newspaper articles keep coming. This was set for homework and the children are now submitting their articles. Enjoy! More to come at the end of the week with Class AS’ own Greek newspaper, problem page and all!

The Wooden Horse – Oliver

Troy Boy – Katie

Troy Falls – John

Trojans tricked – Jack

Theseus and the Minotaur newspaper articles

Journalistic writing is one of the most difficult things that children have to learn, so we have spent a lot of time this week studying newspaper reports and writing our own. We use the story of Theseus and the Minotaur as a stimulus as the class is now very familiar with the myth. The children had to pick part of the story and give it the newspaper treatment, quite often with bias. Articles are now available to download below with more to follow.

Dumped – Katie

Minotaur killed – Will C

Abandoned – Lily

I can fly – Oliver

Death of our beloved king – James

Trouble with a princess – Eve

Cruel Killing – Madeline

Jilted – Lucy

The terrified man – Josh F

Minotaur dead – Josh NB

Aegeus is dead – Harry

Quick escape – Abi E