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Having expected them to be sepia and more delicate, the design of the little Varmints was a surprise, Droopy-like with monk-hood markings and heavy kangaroo tails. Then their frequently moving ears, like rabbits but with more flexibility, started to endear them to me. Whilst their rural home was very beautiful, the sudden building of a fully-formed city in such a short sequence never felt believable and thus I didn't feel the pining as I should. (I really have a thing about time and gradualness in films at the moment.) Pupils throughout Middlemarch School thoroughly enjoyed this term’s Take One Book: Cinnamon by Neil Gaiman. Very nicely animated short film that works completely without language and only works properly with the music of Johann Johannsson. A call for help from nature turned into a short film.
KS2 Expanded Noun Phrases Worksheet to Support the - Twinkl KS2 Expanded Noun Phrases Worksheet to Support the - Twinkl
In Year 5, we focused on making predictions and used lots of book talk to support our predictions. For Art, we looked at the illustrators drawing of a varmint, then used different styles to draw our own. We even used an anime style! Sehr schön animierter Kurzfilm, der komplett ohne Sprache auskommt und erst durch die Musik von Johann Johannsson richtig funktioniert. Ein Film gewordener Hilferuf der Natur. In year 3, we looked at the imagery from Journey and completed some wonderful descriptions; we used similes and expanded noun phrases to describe the girl’s journey.Would like to say before I start that I haven't read the book Varmints by Helen Ward and Marc Craste, so I can't compare the film to it in any way. These thoughts are just from my viewing of the animation :) I was terribly disappointed for the first 5-10 minutes, but later I was very moved by these small creatures and their newly urbanised country idyll. In art, we thought about what we would like to see behind a magical door. We then created our 3D art pieces with our ideas. We also made magical lanterns in the colour that we would like our magical crayon to be.
Varmints | Centre for Literacy in Primary Education - CLPE Varmints | Centre for Literacy in Primary Education - CLPE
In art, we created our perfect setting - something we would love to see on the other side of our magical door! We used chalk pastels and various mark making techniques to produce a fabulous piece of art! In class, we wrote in response to the text. Year 3 created poetry based on the highly detailed images and vocabulary in the text, Year 4 imagined what it would be like to stand in the rainforest and described their imagined experiences, Year 5 researched Bengal tigers and wrote their own non-chronological reports while Year 6 reimagined the story and developed their own stories set in another culture having researched their own choice of country. Children told us that the Indian dance workshop was “amazing” and “like nothing they had ever done before’. It was fantastic to see so many of our pupils engaging with new experiences and activities.We found it on YouTube and gave it a watch. There's a bit more going on in the short but it's no less captivating. In Year 6, we wrote a setting description of the enchanted forest, or the magnificent castle, and then wove this into our narrative that started with a prequel of how the crayons came into existence.
Varmints — Studio AKA Varmints — Studio AKA
In Year 6, we wrote Varmints part 2, by starting off where the story ended... at the beginning! We thought about other animals that were under threat of extinction and wrote from their perspective, e.g. an orangutan in the rainforest.
In Year 3, we created shape poems with a focus on adjectives to describe a varmint. In Art, we ventured outside to collect leaves and plants and made a collage and also practised our photography skills.
