Teach Primary Issue 18.7

www.teachwire.net | 65 T E ACH RE AD I NG & WR I T I NG Loved this? Try these... v Bloom by Anne Booth, illus. Robyn Wilson-Owen v The Secret Sky Garden by Linda Sarah and Fiona Lumbers v Every House on Every Street by Jess Hitchman, illus. Lili La Baleine v Number 7 Evergreen Street by Julia Patton v Seed by Caryl Lewis restore biodiversity and create new habitats for wildlife. How to make them: • You need – meadow flower seeds, peat-free compost, water, powdered clay (from craft shops). • Mix the ingredients in the ratio of 1 cup seeds, 5 cups compost, 2–3 cups powdered clay. • Slowly add enough water to make everything stick together. • Roll mixture into firm balls. • Leave to dry in the sun. • Have fun throwing them into bare patches OR bag them up and sell as part of a class enterprise project. HAPPY SUNFLOWERS Sunflowers always feel like a very cheerful bloom, which is why they are the perfect way to encourage children to think about all the things that make them happy. Not only are these useful for the children to refer to if they feel they need to, but also to help the adults around them understand better how to support them. Start with a discussion about the kinds of things that make us happy. Are there any that are the same as anyone else? Do people have different things? Depending on the age and maturity of the children with whom you are doing this activity, you might get pupils naming objects (my teddy, pizza, my cat) or thinking a little deeper (going for a walk with my dad, watching the sunset with friends, doing things to help people). The children are going to create ‘happy sunflowers’, where each petal has something that makes them happy written or drawn on it. Use pre-cut petals or paper strips, which can then be stuck onto the centres of the sunflowers. For the centres, you could use paper plates or circles of card with a photo of the child stuck on. If you wanted to get a little more creative, it is easy to create a pointillism effect using a cotton bud and brown or black paint, to look like sunflower seeds. Jo Cummins is an experienced primary school teacher and English leader. As well as blogging about new children’s books, and creating educational resources, she has been involved in long-listing and judging national books awards. Jo currently works for a specialist educational provision in Hampshire in a teaching and advisory role. librarygirlandbookboy.com grow their own sunflowers. With strong links to the science and maths curriculums, there’s plenty of scope for exploration. Life cycle of a plant Ask the children to observe and describe how seeds and bulbs grow into mature plants. They could meet this objective by creating a seed diary for their sunflowers. Start at Day Zero with a sketch of the seed. Include details of how they potted the seed and what it will need to grow. After about a week, the first green shoots will appear, then a bud, then a bloom. The entire life cycle can take some time, so pupils may need to take their growing plants home to continue to observe and update their diaries. Labelled diagrams In both primary Key Stages, the curriculum requires pupils to identify the basic structure of plants and describe the functions of those parts (roots, stem, leaves, and flowers). As their sunflower seedlings grow, the children could produce labelled diagrams of them and research the role each part of the plant plays in its growth and development. Plotting a graph Depending on the age of the children you are working with, you could support them to collect data from the growing plants to produce a bar graph or line graph. If you are hoping to produce a bar graph with your class, you could measure the height of all the seedlings on a given day and use that to help you decide what parameters you are going to have for your bars. For example: roof, or gingerbread people, baked by pupils, could come alive and run amok? Depending on the age of the children you work with, you could set up and photograph a scenario based on pupils’ ideas to inspire their writing. If the children are older, they could photograph or photoshop their own ideas as a starting point. You could add speech bubbles to the photos, do some drama work to explore the characters’ dialogue, or use apps to animate the characters and have them talking. You could also use the photo prompts to structure and plan a lengthier narrative. Grow your own sunflowers This story provides the ideal opportunity for the children to 0–2cm, 2–4cm, 4–6cm. Create a tally chart of how many plants you will have in each bar then plot onto a bar graph. You could also collect continuous data from a nominated ‘class plant’ and measure it at regular intervals (every two days, for example). You could then use this data to plot a line graph with ‘day’ and ‘height’ on the axes. To extend this, you could plot and compare the data of two plants in the same graph. TP