Descriptive Writing

How to Catch a Star

by Oliver Jeffers

This is a lovely story about a little boy that wants to catch a star. Again I used the Hamilton Trust planning scheme to get ideas for this unit. Browse down for our display work.

Brainstorming Adjectives

Brainstorm adjectives about a star...bright, golden, glittery, luminous etc

We also describe the rocket...a red speedy rocket, a fast gigantic rocket, a fun  pointy rocket.

How would you catch a star?

We always have a lively discussion about how we could possibly catch a star.

What will you do with your star?

Children write about what they would do when they catch their star. Some cute answers from the past include taking the star to see the Eiffel Tower in Paris and taking the star out to a birthday dinner.

Similes

After reading Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, we discuss similes...what can a star be like? A star is like a diamond, a wish, a piece of salt, a speck of glitter.

Writing poems

We finish off by writing our own night time poems.

Diary Writing and Recounts

Recounts

This is one of my favourite Year 1 topics! Thanks to Hamilton Trust again! The story is very cute and the children find wombats hilarious! 

It is a great time for learning the days of the week and discussing personal experiences.

Adjectives

The children draw a wombat in the middle of their page and then we have a lively discussion about how to describe our wombat. We end up with words like hungry, sleepy, furry, cute, chubby etc.

Children then write sentences using their adjectives. 

Writing a diary

We discuss how we use our school diaries and why they are useful to us. We sing songs about days of the week. We create our own diaries by adding the things we do on a particular day of the week.

Writing a recount

Next on the agenda in this topic is writing our own recounts of a day out the children have experienced. We start by watching Wallace and Gromit in A Grand Day Out.

Then we set about thinking and discussing any memories we have about days out. Finally we write up our recount about our day out.

Charlie and Lola

 I started the year with a lovely unit based on Charlie and Lola as part of Stories in Familiar Settings. The unit can be found on the Hamilton Trust website.

Our Activities

Character: we explored character by brainstorming adjectives to describe Charlie and Lola. We also made our own Charlie and Lola puppets using computer printouts and straws.

Settings: we used Ikea catalogues and each child created a room for our big Charlie and Lola House display. This activity also provides foreign langauage children with the opportunity to learn vocabulary related to 'Home' such as rooms of the house and household objects.

Adding New Ideas to a story: after reading I Will Never Not Ever Eat A Tomato, we wrote lists of food we didn't like and then transformed them into a Fantastic Fantasy Food Menu...so potatoes became Dusty Rocks from the Moon and green Beans became Dragon Fingers.

Acting out a story: We used our puppets and our settings posters to recreate scenes from Charlie and Lola stories.

Storyboards: Finally we planned our own storyboards based on 'I Am Too Absolutely Small For School'.