Visit from Jenny Sommervell

Today we were fortunate to have Jenny Sommervell in our school reading two of her picture books, The Day Dad Blew Up the Cowshed and The Eel Hunt. We  learned lots about how Jenny gets her ideas from real experiences and stories from childhood, and she also told us about her writing process. It takes a long time and a lot of effort to get a book to the publishing stage! Jenny told us that the most important thing is to get the story right first, then to think about choosing the right words to use. She also told us how important it is to have the characters encountering lots of problems because that is what makes the story interesting.  This is known as "torturing the characters"!

Symmetry

Room 5 worked in groups to draw and cut out shapes that were symmetrical. First we folded a square of paper in half, then we drew lines with a ruler to make different straight sided shapes with three sides, four sides and more than four sides. We cut in from the fold, so when the shape was cut out we could unfold the shape. The fold line went down the middle of the shape, and each side of the shape was exactly the same as the other side. The fold line is the line of symmetry. It divides the shape exactly in half.
We grouped our shapes according to how many sides there were. Here are some pictures of the finished work. Everyone had to explain what they were learning on their individual blog. They needed to explain the task and say a line of symmetry is.

Please visit individual blogs and give us feedback on how successfully you think we have explained our learning.