Sketchings

We have been looking at sketching and as our topic is our local environment (including the wonderful hills and mountains and forests that surround us), we thought we would have a go at sketching some leaves from the trees in our grounds.  

We have looked at a brilliant video about a child called Austin who wanted to get better at drawing a butterfly and have tried to draw a few sketches, focusing on changing 1 thing each time to make them even better.  

We have also tried to do some shading using darker lines, cross hatching (like Shoo Rayner) and smudging. Can you tell which is which?

What do you think of our drawings?  Thank you for leaving a comment!

Our Virtual Visit by Shoo Rayner

Shoo Rayner outside his shed where he writes

We have a had a sensational time today.  We had a visit by one of our favourite authors - Shoo Rayner!

We have been looking at his books in English and a wide selection of his titles in class.  We have even watch some of his videos from his YouTube channel - Shoo Rayner Drawing Channel.  Because of all this, we have been looking at his book 'Axel Storm: Diamond Moon' and trying to retell it.  We have made it into pictures and have retold some of the story which we have shown on this blog.

Imagine our surprise when Shoo actually commented on one of our pieces of work! We were almost wetting ourselves with excitement!

And that brings us almost up to date. Shoo contacted me to see if he could do a virtual visit with the class because of the work we have been doing.  Well, we jumped at the chance and scrapped what we had planned to do for the rest of the week to think about the kind of questions we could ask Shoo.

We looked at our better question matrix to try and come up with somereally interesting question to ask Shoo:

We then printed out the questions we generated really big and stuck them around our interactive whiteboard so we could ask them without looking down at our books.

Well! What a morning! The visit was even better than I could have ever imagined. 

It didn't start smoothly though.  We had tested our skype and made sure it was working but when it came to 10:45, it said that Shoo wasn't online. After a quick email, Shoo told us that skype was saying the same about us! Oh no! We fixed this quickly by turning off skype then turning it back on again and it worked! Hurrah!

We welcomed Shoo to our classroom by saying "Hi Shoo!" and waving our hands in the air.  He told us that he was in his shed at the bottom of his garden where he works and showed us his shed by turning his webcam around.  Then he asked if we had any questions. 

Here they are:

When did your start writing by yourself?
1987

When did you start reading?
When he was about five years old and he was really excited to finish his first book.  he always annoyed his teachers for extra reading lessons.

Where do you live?
In a magical place called the Forest Of Dean. Nobody goes there unless they really want to find it. It is like an island of peace. 

When is your birthday?
15th December

Who is your favourite character?
The Ginger Ninja

What is your favourite Scaredy Cat book?
Bluebeard because it could really happen. 

What is your favourite book of all time?
Where The Wild Things Are because of the illustrations.

Have you won any awards for your books?
No!  But he has won 2 awards for his drawing work on YouTube. Hurrah!

Why did you choose to become an author?
He didn't know to begin with but then he said it was because he liked to tell stories. 

Why did you choose black and white pictures for your books?
Because colour takes too long and is more expensive.

Where do you write your books?
He writes his books in a shed that he built himself!

Are any of your characters based on real people and animals?
When he has a walk, he gets inspired by people and animals but the characters are not based on any one person or animal except the Ginger Ninja who is based on Shoo when he was a little kitten! (Shoo's words!)

What book are you currently working on?
Roman Brit. It is a story about a boy in Anglo-Saxon times.

Would you include us in your next book please?
Shoo said we could write that book better ourselves because a writer writes about what they know about and we know St Joseph's the best. 

What do you do when you get some new ideas for stories?
Shoo jots them down and sticks them around his computer.

Who is your favourite author?
Maurice Sendak

What might Axel Storm be when he grows up?
He might be the first person to land on Mars!

How do you come up with an idea for a book?
Anything can be the start of a story for example when Shoo was talking to some Year 6 children one of them mentioned a Mushroom Man and that made Shoo think of lots of ideas for a story about a Mushroom Man who grows overnight... like mushrooms!

Shoo reminded us that if we want to get better at anything, we just have to do 3 things: practice, practice, practice. 

Shoo also told us how to draw different kinds of trees.  They were awesome. 

We are writing this three hours after the skype and we are all still grinning like cats who have drunk all the milk!

Shoo Rayner, you are a legend!  Thanks a million.

Edit:
The post has changed as I wanted to update it, but instead of updating it, I deleted it!  I have rewritten the post with help from the Feedly app on my phone, but some of the pictures and videos are missing.  I will update this again!

I just wanted to add a few things.  

Firstly, the ongoing reaction of the children.  All week they have been quoting Shoo's answers and short phrases like 'practice, practice, practic'e have had a real impact in our class.  One child got an answer wrong during the part of the lesson where we all participate together and Anya said, 'Don't worry.  It's like Shoo Rayner said... you just need some more practice!'  This attitude is exactly what we are trying to foster in class and, although I instill it daily, having a 'famous author' reinstating what we are saying has had a huge effect.  

Also, it has got all the children in class reading even more.  The part of the shelf where Shoo's books belong is empty and the class are swapping Shoo Rayner books like trading cards!

We, as teachers, have also referred back to Shoo's visit in trying to help the children achieve the best the can; reminding them that we don't get everything right first time and that we often have to go back and make things better.  

During guided reading, one of the children spotted one of Shoo's books in the Project X guided reading series and referred back to the visit.  

This was an exceptional, inspirational, tremendous experience for the children and one that we will be looking to repeat again.  The children were asking the next day if Shoo could come back again! 

I know I have said it before, but thanks so much Shoo.  You are a role model and a perfect gent.  Thanks a million.

Axel Storm: The Adventure Begins

We have been reading Axel Storm: Diamond Moon and have chosen our favourite segment to write, Everyone wanted to write about the part where Axel and Uncle Raffles begin Axel's training. This is Claudia's. 

Claudia's Axel Storm

We used Pie Corbett's idea of rehearsing what we wanted to write as a class and retold it a few times with actions before going back to our places and writing. 

Thanks for leaving a comment!

A New Year! A New Story!

Axel Storm By Shoo Rayner

This week we have been reading the excellent story Axel Storm: Diamond Moon by Shoo Rayner (you can follow him on twitter @shoorayner and find his YouTube account here). We really enjoyed the story and decided to retell the story, but parts were missing from our retllings. Different groups could remember diffrent part so we got together and drew our different parts on a class story board. We checked with the book and remembered almost all of it!

Here are the story boards:

Why not get your child to retell the story?