The children began the lesson in groups, working collaboratively, to sort different sentence openers. They used their prior knowledge of different openers to make connections in order to sort them correctly. The children have been learning a range of complex openers including; prepositional phrases, adverbial phrases and emotive language. We were impressed to see how quickly the children could remember and make connections to match the openers.
After this activity, the students were given iPads in pairs to record their own sentences orally. Using pictures from the original story, ‘Meerkat Mail’, the children recorded sentences to describe what was happening in each picture. However, each of their sentences had to include an ambitious opener from one of the types we have discovered in the lesson. They were also encouraged to use interesting vocabulary and descriptive phrases. Once they had completed their sentence, they listened back to their work and made suitable corrections and improvement.
At the end of the lesson, the children shared their work with the whole class and were able to give feedback to their peers. We look forward to seeing how the children use this practice in their own ‘Meerkat Mail’ stories to create ambitious sentences.
By Amanda White
Year 2 Elephants Class Teacher