Seals’ Class Assembly Script Term 2

Evie: Welcome to Seals’ Class Assembly. We have had a jam-packed couple of terms and would love to share our learning and experiences with you.

Harry: We began the year reading a wordless book called ‘Chalk’, it was about a group of children who discover a bag of mysterious chalk in their playground.

Ewan: Incredibly, their chalk drawings become real life and the mischievous boy in the group draws a dinosaur. The ferocious dinosaur terrifies the children. To defeat it, another of the children cleverly drew a rain cloud, to melt the fierce dinosaur.

Isabella: Once certain they were safe, the children leave the chalk where they found it. Perhaps for someone else to find!

Jamie: After reading, we then wrote our own versions of the story, focussing on subordinate clauses and building tension in our stories. Here are some extracts from our extended writing.

(Chdn who are reading move to the front, Lucea, Finley, Ella, Brendan, Amelia)

Lucea: As three miserable children stomped in the freezing cold rain, a little girl in a rosy pink coat spotted a pea-green dinosaur clutching a bag in its sharp jaws. The little girl dug her hand into the bag, fishing for a yellow piece. She pulled out a peachy-coloured one and began to draw an incredible sun.

Finley: Suddenly, the sun became real and the children couldn’t see a thing as it was so bright. Their butterfly drawings began to flip out of the ground. The cheeky boy slyly drew a huge dinosaur and without warning it came to life!

Ella: When the frightened children looked around at the dinosaur, it started to chase them angrily. While the colossal dinosaur quickly ran across the playground the girls began to scale the climbing frame. As the dinosaur whipped its scaly tail and roared, the children were frozen with fear.

Brendan: Hiding in the tunnel the children began to shiver. Quickly and cleverly the boy drew a raincloud. It began to rain heavily.

Amelia: The rain was like an icy snow storm. As the huge dinosaur began to melt he let out a final, ferocious roar! Now the dinosaur was nothing but a green puddle. They hung the bag on the dinosaur’s mouth. As they quietly walked away, the boy looked back at it sitting peacefully in the rain. Who next would find the bag?

CLAP

Livvy: Using Chalk as inspiration, we considered how we would have escaped the dinosaur. We are studying The Amazon Rainforest in topic, so we chose either animals or plants from the jungle on which to escape.

Amelie: Using our imaginations, we gave these creatures super powers in order to get away from the huge dinosaur!

(Show artwork relating to Chalk – hold up books.)

CLAP

Finn: We are now reading Journey to the River Sea, a story about a young girl called Maia set in 1910, who travels to South America to live with distant relatives.

Teo: She imagines a loving family with whom she will share great adventures. However, reality proves to be very different!Using our reading and retrieval skills, we used facts from the text to compose letters, written as Maia, back to her old friends and teachers.

Isabella: Despite how different reality is to Maia’s expectations, we considered her positive outlook on life and how this might effect the tone of her writing.

(Chdn reading to come to the front Oscar, Ewan, Megan, Mollie, Grace, Reuben)

Oscar: Dear old friends and teachers, I have arrived safely in Manaus. It’s beautiful here, although the house is a dull colour. I think it helps to keep the house cool because it is so hot out.

Ewan: I am not allowed out to go outside as much as I would like but occasionally I do go to the ballet and have piano lessons. The twins can easily be seen as being a bit rude because they seem shy. I am sure this is just because they are not used to having me around.

Mollie: Although Mrs Carter looks as if she would smell of lavender or roses, she actually smells of Lysol. Probably because of the disinfectant she uses to clean the house. I’ve heard of some nasty diseases down here.

Megan: I recently visited the theatre by boat, a boy rowed for me, he didn’t speak English but he was very kind. Suddenly he disappeared and strangely I haven’t seen him since

Grace: They have bolted my door and there is mosquito netting all around the house, but they must just be keeping me safe. We have food shipped over from England, it is delicious, but I do want to try the native food. They make me very happy because it reminds me of home.

Reuben: I miss you all. But I am sure the twins will soon be my friends. Please write back soon, love Maia.

CLAP

Lewis: In topic we have been studying rainforests and the Amazon. During our research projects we have discovered some amazing facts and would like to ask you a few questions!

(Chdn asking questions move to the front)

John: We will read you a question with a multiple choice answer. Put your hand up for the answer you think is correct. We will give you a point for a majority answer!

Sasha: How large do you think a Boa Constrictor can get? A) 3 metres B) 9 metres C) 7 metres? A…(pause) B…. (pause) or C (pause)?

(John and William to unravel string to show size)

The answer is 9 metres!

Archie: Every year an area the size of, A) Britain B) France C) Wales is destroyed?A…(pause) B…. (pause) or C (pause)?

The answer is A – Britain!

Lola: The Amazon rainforest is A) 50 million years old B) 10 000 years old C) 3 million years old.A…(pause) B…. (pause) or C (pause)?

The answer is 50 million years old!

William: There are dolphins that live in the Amazon river. True or false. Hands up for True. (pause) Hands up for false (pause) The answer is true!

John: Well done you got ____ out of 4 correct. Not bad! We hope you have found these facts as interesting as we have.

CLAP

Teo: During our research we also discovered many upsetting and shocking facts about the impact we as humans are having on the rainforest.

Lewis: As a class we feel very strongly that this is something we, both ourselves and as a planet need to do something about.

(Chdn sing ‘Do Something About it.’)

CLAP

Maria: Every 2 seconds man destroys rainforest, the size of a football pitch!

Jasmine: Every year an area twice the size of Florida is destroyed.

Abi: Scientists predict that in 100 years all the worlds’ rainforests will be gone.

Amelia: We have designed posters to raise awareness about deforestation.

(hold up posters)

CLAP

Mollie: Most recently in English we have been learning a poem through talk for writing called ‘For Forest’ by Grace Nichols. We would like to perform this for you.

(Chdn to perform ‘For Forest’)

Grace: Using ‘For Forest’ as our inspiration, we have written our own poems based upon deforestation.

Maria: We focussed on personification to really emphasise the pain caused by deforestation, imagining how we would feel as the rainforest if our homes and surroundings were being destroyed.

Dylan: Forest in agony, Forest in agony, Forest yapping like a helpless dog, as the fire singes his body, Fire isolates things far and wide, His last leaves just disappear.

Forest gets engulfed in writhing flames, His feet turn to dust and soil, As the fire creeps up his skimpy body, And collapses to a pile on the floor.

Jonah: Forest wishing she could stay and help the birds to fly away, Her stunning leaves starting to curl, and her twirly arms sadly going to waste.

Forest trying to tame the devastating flames, but they keep growing, growing and keeping her back.

John: Fire enraging through her arms, Feeling her life source flicker, Giving up as her bark darkens, Everything goes black.

Forest hoping it will end, Not having to watch it dies, Forest hiding as the sound, engulfs her in eternal sorrow.

Lola: Forest scared about the future, Yet Forest is so young, And when she sees the tractor, She knows soon she will be gone.

All her limbs are melting down, Flames creeping to her heart, Animals are no longer, Waiting for new life to start.

Forest wanting safety, forest needing safety, and we must give her that.

CLAP

Jamie: Earlier in the term we visited Kew Gardens in London. It was amazing. When we entered the Palm House, the environment was just like in the rainforest, so hot and humid! Miss Parsons and my glasses steamed up when we walked in!

Finn: We learnt about how to survive in the Amazon and the medicines and food which we get from the rainforests. Did you know that majority of modern day medicines originate from herbs and plants found in the rainforest!

Evie: We also visited another plant house which contained carnivorous plants, which means plants that eat meat, or other insects!They were fascinating. We also saw a water dragon which hadn’t been spotted for several years and fish descended from piranhas!

Finley: Throughout the day we collected tropical leaves to bring back and use for observational drawing in art. We have been using differing media and techniques to capture the texture and pattern of the leaves. These are our mixed media collages.

(Show art books with mixed media)

CLAP

Dylan: The day was fantastic and really helped me to appreciate what the climate of the rainforest is like and what it would be like to live like a member of the Kayapo tribe in the rainforest.

Livvy: We have been researching the Kayapo tribe, who are an indigenous tribe living deep in the Amazon rainforest and have little contact with the outside world.

Oscar: We have designed and made Kayapo tribe headpieces and created our own Kayapo feast of traditional South American foods. We made our own tortillas, salsa and guacamole. It was delicious!

(Images and video from cooking)

Abi: In science we have been learning about electricity and most recently we have been investigating the conductivity of materials.

Mollie: We had a task assigned from NASA to help find out which materials available on the space station would make effective switches to help reconnect a broken circuit.

Jonah: They only had limited materials until further resources arrived by shuttle.

Lucea: We designed investigations to find out which materials conducted electricity and which perhaps could have other uses aboard the space station.

Brendan: Effective conductors included foil (surprisingly to some of us) metal discs and paperclips.

Megan: Using the information from our investigations we then created our own switches using both insulators and conductors for the appropriate parts of the switch. It was important to make sure that conductors touched to complete the circuit.

CLAP

Sasha: Thank you for listening, we hope you have enjoyed our assembly.

(We would like to end with a Brazilian chant we have been learning.

(Chdn to perform Hey Dumba)

Ella: Please bow your heads for our prayer.Dear Lord,Please help us to recognize the issues that are going on around the world.

Jasmine: Help lead us down a path where we can learn to save the environment and put an end to deforestation.

Archie: Help us bring these issues to light so that slowly but surely we can save our planet. Amen.