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Hamilton have produced books in printed and digital formats specially for children to read in small groups.
Get festive with Let’s Celebrate! (Debjani Chatterjee & Brian D’arcy). Explore, write and perform celebration poetry. Revise word classes and prepositions for time, place, cause.
We recommend that you start with the core unit, the heart of this English block of study. This introduces key textual material and sets the tone for any further units you wish to teach. These can be selected on the basis of the needs of your class – look at the green icons to identify the unit’s particular focus: SPAG, Composition or Comprehension. Whichever units you choose, we suggest teaching them in order, as there is a built-in progression indicated by the numbering.
‘UNIT PLAN’ gives you a text version of all parts of the unit to use in your school planning documentation. ‘DOWNLOAD ALL FILES’ gives you that unit plan plus all of the associated documents.
Spoken language
-- Participate in discussion and performances.
-- Gain and maintain the interest of the listener(s).
-- Maintain attention and participate actively in collaborative conversations, staying on topic and initiating and responding to comments.
Comprehension
-- Prepare poems to read aloud and perform, showing understanding through intonation, tone, volume and action.
-- Discuss a wide range of poetry.
-- Identify how language, structure, and presentation contribute to meaning.
-- Recognise different forms of poetry.
Composition
-- Discuss writing similar to that which they are planning to write, in order to understand and learn from its structure, grammar and vocabulary.
-- Discuss and record ideas.
-- Compose sentences, progressively building a varied and rich vocabulary and an increasing range of sentence structures.
Texts
Let’s Celebrate! Festival Poems from Around the World edited by Debjani Chatterjee and Brian D’Arcy.
Poems used from this book
Celebrate by Valerie Bloom
Ice Festival by Brian D’Arcy
The Chinese Dragon by Catherine Benson
Diwali by Debjani Chatterjee
Harvest by Joan Poulson
Harvest Festival by Simon Fletcher
Optional texts:
Any other children’s celebration or festival poetry books
Day 1 Teaching
Share Let’s Celebrate poetry collection and read Carnival with expression and intonation. Discuss how using expression and intonation enhances the performance of a poem.
Activity
In groups, children discuss then learn a selected section of the poem for performance. They rehearse and memorise their section, concentrating on preparing an engaging performance.
Day 2 Teaching
Make a list on the flip chart of festivals the children celebrate in their own homes. Reread Carnival and revise key terms: line, stanza, refrain, rhythm and rhyme using the mix and match glossary cards.
Activity
In groups children use the discussion prompts to guide discussion of a festival poem, using poetry terms and discussing techniques.
Day 3 Teaching
Read Diwali, pointing out that it is an acrostic poem. Discuss what the poem tells us about Diwali and how the language of the poem suggest this is an important and exciting festival. Highlight key words, phrases and features.
Activity
Children read and discuss a celebration or festival poem of relevance to them. They identify and annotate features from their poem that show the festival or celebration is exciting.
Day 4 Teaching
Reread Diwali. Share Harvest and Harvest Festival. With the class, prepare for writing an acrostic poem about the harvest festival by creating a bank of words starting with h/a/r/v/e/s/t. Model writing your Harvest acrostic poem.
Activity
Children focus on the celebration/festival that they read about on Day 3. They write the word out and brainstorm a bank of words associated with that festival and starting with the letters which spell the name. Children individually write a poem.
Word reading
-- Apply their growing knowledge of root words, prefixes and suffixes to read aloud and to understand the meaning of new words they meet.
Composition
-- Discuss and record ideas.
-- Compose and rehearse sentences orally, progressively building a varied and rich vocabulary and an increasing range of sentence structures.
-- Discuss writing similar to that which they are planning to write, in order to understand and learn from its structure, grammar and vocabulary.
Grammar
-- Use and understand the grammatical terminology in Appendix 2 accurately and appropriately when discussing their writing and reading [nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs].
Texts
Let’s Celebrate! Festival Poems from Around the World edited by Debjani Chatterjee and Brian D’Arcy
Poems used from this book
Harvest Festival by Simon Fletcher
On Buddha Purnima by Bashabi Fraser
Day 1 Teaching
Read Harvest Festival and identify the adjectives and nouns, circling the adjectives pink and the nouns blue. Work through the Word Classes Presentation, reminding children about the function of each word class. Use slide 6 to identify word classes in a sentence.
Activity
Children read Harvest Mini Reports. They discuss the reports and identify the 4 word classes. Children ‘collect’ the words and record in a Word Classes Table.
Day 2 Teaching
Revise word classes, using the Word Classes Presentation. Children imagine that they had been to Day 1’s harvest celebrations. Use the Word Class List Chart to write about things people did to celebrate harvest using the correct verb form and all four word classes.
Activity
Children discuss the festival celebrations explored on Day 1, imagining what they might have seen. They write sentences onto the Word Classes List Chart about the festival.
Day 3 Teaching
Read some of the sentences from Day 2 then read On Buddha Pernima. Note that this is a list poem use it to help model your own list poem entitled ‘At the Harvest Celebration’.
Activity
Children use their sentences from Day 2 to develop and write a list poem. They add extra adjectives and adverbs to develop their sentences. Children give and take feedback and make improvements.
Word Classes Presentation
Revise how to identify nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs by the way that they function in a sentence.
Spoken language
-- Ask relevant questions to extend their understanding and build vocabulary and knowledge.
-- Participate in discussion.
-- Maintain attention and participate actively in collaborative conversations, staying on topic and initiating and responding to comments.
Comprehension
-- Discuss a wide range of poetry.
-- Identify how language, structure and presentation contribute to meaning.
-- Check that text makes sense to them, discussing understanding and explaining the meaning of words in context.
-- Ask questions to improve understanding of a text.
Transcription
-- Use the first two or three letters of a word to check its meaning in a dictionary.
Composition
-- Discuss writing similar to that which they are planning to write, in order to understand and learn from its structure, grammar and vocabulary.
-- Discuss and record ideas.
-- Compose sentences, progressively building a varied and rich vocabulary and an increasing range of sentence structures.
Grammar
-- Use and understand the grammatical terminology in Appendix 2 accurately and appropriately when discussing their writing and reading [nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs].
Texts
Let’s Celebrate! Festival Poems from Around the World edited by Debjani Chatterjee and Brian D’Arcy
Poems used from this book
Ice Festival by Brian D’Arcy
Moon Cakes for Trung Thu by Mandy Coe
On Buddha Purnima by Bashabi Fraser
Websites
Online rhyming dictionaries
https://www.poetry4kids.com/rhymes/
https://www.rhymezone.com/
Day 1 Teaching
Read Moon Cakes for Trung Thu by Mandy Coe. Discuss the celebration and read the background to the Moon Festival. Reread the poem, as children imagine what it would be like to be there. How do the words build a picture?
Activity
In pairs children reread a copy of the poem Moon Cakes for Trung Thu. They discuss the poem using given questions.
Day 2 Teaching
Discuss and read the text What are Festivals For? Note that it contains some tricky words both to read and understand before modelling dictionary skills to find and define the word Festival.
Activity
Children reread What are festivals for? They talk about the general sense of the text and highlight anything that isn’t clear to them. Children use dictionaries to find out the meanings of the tricky, underlined words.
Day 3 Teaching
Read Ice Festival and Buddha Purnima. Highlight the rhymes and discuss what rhyming is and strategies to collate rhyming words. Then generate rhyming words and start collecting powerful adjectives, verbs and adverbs about fireworks.
Activity
Children collect ideas on a firework theme to prepare for writing rhyming list poetry. They come up with rhyming words and collect powerful adjectives, verbs and adverbs to sit alongside these.
Day 4 Teaching
Discuss some of the ideas from Day 3 and bring together the rhymes and powerful language to model how to start developing sentences for a list poem. Focus on building images through the addition of the powerful verbs, adjectives, adverbs.
Activity
Children look back through their ideas from Day 3. They choose some of their rhyming words and build sentences around them using their suggested powerful adjectives, verbs and adverbs. Children write a list poem.
Spoken language
-- Participate in discussion; Maintain attention and participate actively in collaborative conversations, staying on topic and initiating and responding to comments.
Composition
-- Discuss and record ideas.
-- Compose sentences, building a varied and rich vocabulary and an increasing range of sentence structures.
Grammar
-- Use prepositions to express time, place and cause.
Texts
Let’s Celebrate! Festival Poems from Around the World edited by Debjani Chatterjee and Brian D’Arcy
Poems used from this book
The Chinese Dragon by Catherine Benson
Ode to Tomatoes by Pablo Neruda
Optional texts
Any other children’s festival poetry books.
Day 1 Teaching
Read and discuss The Chinese Dragon. Introduce prepositions using Prepositions for time, place and cause presentation. Children spot prepositions in the poem. Model changing the first prepositional phrase in the poem.
Activity
In pairs, children discuss and replace the prepositional phrases in the original poem. They use a range of time, place and cause prepositional phrases.
Day 2 Teaching
Recap on prepositions using the Prepositions for time, place and cause presentation. Experiment with different prepositional phrases to change the meaning of a poetry line. Explain that children will extend a series of celebration lines using a range of prepositional phrases.
Activity
Children extend celebration sentences using prepositional phrases for time, place and cause. They decide on an order for them to create a poem.
Day 3 Teaching
Share Ode to Tomatoes and discuss the festival noting key information. Children describe to a partner how it might feel to be at La Tomatina. Model writing a sentence about La Tomatina using a prepositional phrase.
Activity
Children write an account of the La Tomatina festival, using and underlining the prepositional phrases that they use. They use a mix of time, place and cause prepositions.
Prepositions for Time, Place and Cause Presentation
Teach children about prepositions and how they can front prepositional phrases giving information about time, place and cause.
Spoken language
-- Maintain attention and participate actively in collaborative conversations, staying on topic and initiating and responding to comments.
-- Participate in discussions.
-- Articulate and justify answers, arguments and opinions.
Transcription
-- Use diagonal and horizontal strokes needed to join letters.
-- Increase legibility, consistency and quality of handwriting.
Composition
-- Discuss and record ideas.
-- Discuss writing similar to that which they are planning to write, in order to understand and learn from its structure, grammar and vocabulary.
-- Compose and rehearse sentences orally, progressively building a varied and rich vocabulary and an increasing range of sentence structures.
-- Assess the effectiveness of their own and others’ writing and suggest improvements.
-- Read aloud their own writing, to a group or the whole class, using appropriate intonation and controlling the tone and volume so that the meaning is clear.
Grammar
-- Use and understand the grammatical terminology in Appendix 2 accurately and appropriately when discussing their writing and reading [nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs].
Texts
Let’s Celebrate! Festival Poems from Around the World edited by Debjani Chatterjee and Brian D’Arcy
Poems used from this book
Poe-Tree for Arbor Day by Sue Hardy Dawson
St Patrick’s Day by Brian D’Arcy
Hallow’een by Jill Townsend
The Christmas Pudding by Anonymous
Websites
Mr Fletcher Poems
Apes to Zebras: An A-Z of Shape Poems
Madtail Miniwhale
Short Story Time
Day 1 Teaching
Share some favourite poems from Let’s Celebrate! and discuss what sort of things these celebrations have in common. Explore the themes and list. Children will be developing ideas around these themes for their own festive poem.
Activity
Children develop ideas for a festival poem. They use books, the internet or prior knowledge to research themes discussed in main teaching. Children make notes, recording useful adjectives, nouns, verbs, adverbs and prepositional phrases.
Day 2 Teaching
Share Poe-Tree for Arbor Day noting that it is a shape poem. Discuss some criteria for the children’s own poems which they will draft today. Emphasise that they are writing a poem which will make the reader feel as if they are there.
Activity
Children use their planning grid from Day 1, to start developing lines for their poem. They focus on creating strong images and capturing the festival mood.
Day 3 Teaching
Share one of the draft poems from Day 2 highlighting good use of language and imagery. Model evaluating and improving the poem, explaining that children will be doing the same today before thinking about the shape of their finished poem.
Activity
Children reread their poem and make improvements. They then work with a partner to support further improvement and give constructive feedback. They think carefully about how they will fit their poem into their chosen shape.
Day 4 Teaching
Look at a couple of shape poems and note how they form an apt shape. Discuss how to take a line and shape it, looking at the length of each word and how many words should fit in each line. Remind children that the focus is on building strong images.
Activity
Children review their poems with a partner, discussing shape options. They write out their poem using accurate joined handwriting in an appropriate shape. Children read their finished work to a partner to assess the impact and receive a ‘feedback quote’.
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