Reading
Our Class Text and Comprehension
In term 1 and 2, our reading comprehension lessons will be based upon our class text, “Bronze and Sunflower” by Cao Wenxuan. In this story, Sunflower has moved to the countryside in China with her father. As her father works all day, Sunflower feels lonely. She watches the river and the people across it who live in a village called Damaidi. She meets a boy called Bronze from Damaidi and the two become friends. When a tragic event brings Sunflower into Bronze’s home, the two children must work together to survive the hardships of village life. To find out more about this text, view our Bronze and Sunflower Knowledge Organiser.
We will also focus on poetry during term 1. We will broaden children’s exposure to texts from other cultures. Children will develop their summarising skills and discuss how language and structure contribute to meaning and effect. In addition, the children will perform their poems with appropriate intonation and movement.
For further information about the reading skills we will focus upon this term, please view “Churchill’s Sequential Reading Curriculum”
Independent Reading
In class, we will continue to use the Accelerated Reader program. For further information about this, please view a Parent’s Guide to Accelerated Reader. (https://help.renlearn.co.uk/AR/ARParentGuide) If you need your child’s AR password, please contact me (Mrs Saunders).
Writing
Over the course of the autumn term, we will be writing and creating a narrative poem, based upon a Chinese folktale; writing a biography, about Cheng Tang ; and writing a short narrative, based upon stories from other cultures.
Firstly, we will use our historical knowledge of Chinese folktales to write a narrative poem. Throughout this project we will develop summarising skills, discuss how language and structure contribute to meaning and we will work to enhance the effect of their poems by using figurative language and expanded noun phrases.
Having learnt about Fu Hao and studied his biography, we will then write biographies about Cheng Tang. Writing a biography gives children the opportunity to select appropriate sentence structures and relevant details from their research. They will include relative clauses to provide additional detail.
To conclude our writing in the autumn term, we will write a short story based upon stories from other cultures (for example, Shang Surprise). Writing a story from another culture allows children to create characters, settings and plots that are rooted in the customs and traditions of another country. Children should also include a science fiction element encompassing time travel. They could use cohesive devices to link the plot and a variety of verb forms for clarity.
For further information about the writing skills, we will focus upon this term, please view “Churchill’s Sequential Writing Curriculum”
Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling
Punctuation
This term, we will use a colon to introduce a list; discuss and use commas, semi-colons and colons to separate clauses effectively; discuss idea of ambiguity, when meaning is not clear; model and practice punctuating parenthesis, using pairs of commas, dashes or brackets; identify ellipsis in texts, edit deliberate punctuation errors; and revise use of possessive apostrophe for singular plural nouns
Grammar
This term, we will learn about types of nouns; expanded noun phrases; identify synonyms and antonyms; revise possessive pronouns; accurately use relative clauses; read and enjoy poetry, comparing its use of sentence structure and punctuation with that of prose; write different types of poems; revise four types of sentences; and identify modal verbs.
Spellings
During our spelling lessons in term 1 and 2, we will revise instances where the root word does not change when adding a suffix; revise adding -ing, -ed, -er, -est and -y to words ending in -e with a consonant before it; revise wordswords containing the letter-string “ough”; learn words from the Y5/6 word list; revise the suffix –“ment” -“ness”, “ful”, “less”, “ly”; revise adding suffixes beginning with vowel letters to words with more than one syllable; add suffixes beginning with vowel letters to words ending in – “fer”; revise homophones and other words that are often confused; learn words from the Y5/6 word list; revise the suffix “cious” or “tious”; and revise endings spelt “tion,” “sion,” “ssion,” and “cian”
For an overview of our weekly breakdown of our spellings, please view our Term 1 and Term 2 Homework Grid.
In addition to these weekly spelling rules, we will continue to learn and spell words from the Year 5 and 6 statutory spelling list. For an overview of these spellings, please view the Spelling word list for Year 6.