Proverb Stories and Guessing Games

A group of year 6 children at Parkhill Junior school are continuing the story telling project from last year and have been writing stories based on proverbs.

They used the Internet to research proverbs and then chose one of the sayings that they felt could be made into an appropriate story for Key Stage 1 children. The focus of this Literacy project is to write a piece of work taking into account their audience.

Over the last few weeks the group have spent short sessions in the ICT Learning Centre where they have written, saved and redrafted their stories.

Today they had their first video conference link with Miss Munford's class at Scargill Infants.

Two children from the group read their stories and answered questions. They even got into character and dressed up in wigs and hats to read.

Miss Munford's class were a wonderful audience and they listened well and then asked some very interesting questions about the stories.

The stories read today were:-

Honesty is the best policy and All that glitters is not gold.

Click on the above titles to read the stories.

Miss Munford's class then invited the Parkhill children to play two guessing games. The children gave a short clue to a character from a traditional tale and asked the year 6 children to ask them further questions about this character.

These were the clues for the first character:-

She is a girl who lives with a parent. She has another relative who lives down the road.

The Parkhill children had to work hard to try and guess the character but after asking:-

Is the parent a mum or dad? (Answer: her Mum) and Who is the relative who lives down the road? (Answer: her Grandma) they finally cracked it when they asked; Does she wear a red cloak?

Did you guess it? Little Red Riding Hood.

The second character was much harder to guess as it was a creature from a traditional tale. But after lots of guesses the Parkhill children asked Who does it live with? (Answer: His brothers) and Does it have horns? (Answer: Yes)

Did you guess it? The Three Billy Goats Gruff

The children from Scargill then answered questions about how they thought up their ideas, wrote their clues and tested out their guessing games.

Everyone at Parkhill said what fun it was to take part in the video conference and we hope that we wil be able to read some more stories and guess some more clues in another link soon.

The children have posted some comments about this video conference link. Click on the comments link to read them

Sharing Work - Instructions and Collages

Today children from Miss Haskew's class at Scargill Infants shared two topics from their class work with Mrs Dorling's class at Parkhill Juniors.
In the first topic the children had been writing instructions and they read their work about how to go home after school and also their instructions for making a milkshake.

They had written detailed instructions in a logical order and they read these very confidently.

The Parkhill pupils were able to these questions about the work:-

What did you put first on your instructions?
Did you test your instructions to see if they worked?
How did you organise your writing?
What was difficult about writing the instructions?
Why did you choose the instructions?

The Scargill pupils gave very detailed answers to the questions and explained that they used a toolkit to help them with their work. The wrote the titles first and then had to remember to use bossy words when doing their writing. They tested out their instructions and had even made a milkshake in class.

For the second topic Miss Haskew's class then showed beautiful cut out paper caterpillars that had been decorated with coloured tissue paper.

The Parkhill children asked them:-

Why did you choose a caterpillar?
What did you use to make it?
How did you make it?
Was the caterpillar work fun?

The children explained that they had been reading the story of "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" and had used the pictures in the book to help them design their caterpillar, looking carefully at the colours in the book.

Everyone really enjoyed the session and in January the two classes will link again when Mrs Dorling's class will be able to show their work.

The children had lots of comments about the video conference and these can be read in the comments section below.

London Grid for Learning Video Conferencing Film - Friday 5th June 2009

On Friday 5th June Scargill Infants and Parkhill Juniors linked for another story telling and charades video conference. The schools were filmed by Bob Usher, from the London Grid for Learning, for a new LGfL video conference film.

The children from Parkhill read their stories about "Cinderella" and "The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig" to Miss Haskew's class. They were a model audience, who listened well and asked some very interesting questions about the stories.

Miss Haskew's class then performed two excellent mimes for Parkhill to guess.

Can you guess what they were? Click on the picture to play.

Mime 1

Mime 2

Well done to everyone who took part in this video conference, it was really great!

The Second Video Conference

Stories for Miss Bain's Class 2

Today the children from Scargill and Parkhill had another video conference. The Year 6 Parkhill story tellers read to the children in Miss Bain's Class 2.

The children in Class 2 were another wonderful audience who sat and listened carefully and then asked some very difficult questions about the story ideas and the characters used. Class 2 then completely took the story tellers by surprise and asked if they could act out one of the stories in a mime! After a bit of quick thinking the Parkhill children managed to do a quick mime for the Cinderella story, which caused a lot of laughter all round!

The stories read today were:-

Cinderella - Where the character of Cinderella was not very nice and was unkind to her stepmother.

The Hare and the Tortoise - Where the main characters were two cars, a Ferrari and a Nissan!

Click the above links to read the stories.

Charades

After the stories it was again time for the charades and Class 2 presented two wonderful mimes complete with masks and props. These were an added bonus as they really helped the Parkhill children to guess the nursery rhyme and story that they mimed.

Can you guess the Story? Click on the picture to play.

Can you guess the Nursery Rhyme? Click on the picture to play.

Working together has been a fantastic experience and I know that everyone has really enjoyed these video conference sessions. There has been much activity in the Blog comments, where the children and staff have been able to leave messages about this experience.

We are now looking forward to working together again in the future.

Video Conferencing. Scargill Infant School (Havering) and Parkhill Junior School (Redbridge).

Traditional Tales with a Twist and Charades!

A group of year 6 children at Parkhill have been writing stories "with a twist". The children spent time researching traditional tales on the Internet and using books. They each chose a favourite story and embarked on the task to re-write it with a modern setting, changing the characters.

The Parkhill children have been engaged in a series of video conferences with Infants schools in the Borough of Redbridge and were delighted to be asked to share their work with Year 2 children at Scargill Infant School in Havering.

Today we had our first video conference with Miss Munford's Class 1 and some children in Class 3. They were a model audience who listened carefully to two stories and then asked some very good questions about the work.

The stories read today were:-

Snow White - where the characters were two sisters and seven friends.
The Three Little Pigs - where the characters were reversed and it became the three little wolves and the big bad pig.

Click above to read the stories in full.

Charades!

In order to make this a more interactive session the children at Scargill Infants had prepared two charades to perform.

The miming was superb and after a little discussion the Parkhill children were able to identify them both. The charades were a new idea, which was extremely successful and the children from both schools seemed to really enjoy them. It was great to be able to share ideas and for both schools to participate equally in the video conference.

Can you guess the Nursery Rhyme? Click the Picture to Play.

Can you guess the Story? Click the picture to Play.

We have another video conference with Miss Bain's Class 2 next week, when two different story tellers from Parkhill will be reading and we are looking forward to some more excellent mimes.