Tin Forest

A picture can speak a thousand words....

The children were presented with this picture taken from the story called 'The Tin Forest'. As a class the children were asked to think about what they could see based on the man's feelings. They were then challenged to think of some questions to ask the man if we were able to speak to him. To help the children to achieve this, we looked at a question matrix to build on our skills of question openers.

So what did the children say? 

The children came up with lots of ideas around what the man might be doing and what they could see:

"He is in a house with a light on and it's dark outside" - I.B 
"There is snow outside on the floor" - R.F 
"The man thinks he wants to go outside but he can't" - M.C 
"He has to stay inside looking at the pipes" - L.J 
"I think it's too cold to go outside" - K.P 
"I think he's in a strangers house" - W.R 
"There is a man and it's raining outside" R.M 
"I think he has plants outside the can't do them because it's raining" - S.S 
"He is watching the puddles to see if it is still raining" - T.B 
"I think he needs some friends to play with for when it stops raining" - J.K 
"He might she looking to see if his plants are growing" - B.F 
"He is looking outside to see if it's raining" - R.B

The children also came up with ideas around how the man was feeling and why:

"He looks sad because it is too wet" - S.R 
"He is sad he has no friends to play with" - M-L.J 
"Maybe he is sad because he doesn't have a coat to go outside" - I.P 
"I think he's lonely" - L.J 
"He's got a sad face" - W.R 
"Maybe his wife is lost and he is sad" - S.S 
"I think his wife has died and he is sad" - B.M

We used our question matrix to come up with some questions we might want to ask the old man: 

"When did it start raining?" - T.B 
"Do you have any children?" - M.C 
"Where are you?" - M.C 
"What is your name?" - C.O-H 
"How did you get there?" - R.F 
"Why did you look out the window?" - J.R 
"Which way is your house?" - B.F 
"When did you get there?" - M.H 
"Why did he go there?" - I.P 
"Who are you?" - S.S 
"Which day is it?" - S.S 
"Why have you got a spring?" - J.W

So what next? 

The children had ago at independently writing their thoughts into a sentence, which is a great opportunity to see the progress they are making in phonics. 

After reading the story...

The story is based on an old man who dreams of having a forest with animals. The old man uses scrap metal and junk to create his forest and one day his wish comes true. This provided lots of new learning opportunities, such as learning about 3D shapes to create the old man a new animal for his forest. 

So how can we make the learning more real?  

During the week the children were presented with another challenge which was to go into forest school and find lots of 3D shapes using the Ipads. The children were very excited and found lots of cylinders, cuboids and even a sphere! 

What else did we do....?

Music

Recycling 

What a wonderful week we've had!