Year 5 have just had some really exciting news.  Mr R contacted the European Space Agency to tell them about all of the class’ fantastic work which they have done about space.  He has received a reply from them which we were all really pleased with.  Here is a copy of the messages:

We would be interested to hear what you think about this too.

Over the last few weeks, we have used the computer game Epic Citadel to help us to develop our writing.  We played the game on the tablets and iPads by walking through the town.  We then worked in groups to write descriptive words and phrases about each part of the town.  These were also put into word clouds so we could work out the words which were the most commonly used in our descriptions.  Using precise language and different sentence openers, we wrote narratives and flashbacks about the town.  We found that our stories were really powerful – giving the reader a feeling of actually being in the story themselves and letting them have empathy with the character.  We can’t wait to use computer games to help with our writing again soon.  Here are some of our pieces of writing.  Please add a comment below to let us know what you think about them.

Epic Citadel example 1           Epic Citadel example 2                Epic Citadel example 3                                       Epic citadel example 4

The Year 5 class will proudly present their class assembly on Friday 22nd January at 10:15am.  Please note that that due to the space theme, the Year 5 pupils kindly ask you to be your seat and ready for take-off for 10:15 so that you can join them for what is sure to be an out-of-this-world experience!

We look forward to seeing you there.

The Year 5 pupils.

Last week in Literacy, we had a fantastic time.  Mr R allowed us to play a computer game for twenty minutes during Literacy!  The game was called Epic Citadel, and was a game which was on the iPads and tablets which allowed us to walk through a virtual town called Epic Citadel.  The town was an ancient town which had a church, castle and even a raging river.  After playing the game, we all wrote down descriptive words about the different parts of the town.  We did this in groups and then made word clouds about these.  We found that the descriptive words which we got from playing the game were better as it was as though we had been and visited the town in real life.  We then wrote descriptions about the town, followed by flashbacks which retold the story about why the town had nobody living there.  We had so much fun with our creative writing this week.  Let us know what you thought about using computer games for making your writing better using the comments link.

This week, as part of Science week, we have been allowed to play computer games!  We played the game ‘Gravity: Don’t Let Go’ so we could experience what a space walk will be like for Tim Peake when he does his space walk next week.  Whilst playing the games, we had to write down key words to describe our experience.  We will then use these within our writing later in the day.  We had SO much fun learning in this way.  It really was ‘Out of this world!’  Here are some examples of our writing.  Click on the image to get a clearer view of each writing extract.