Year 5 2021

Welcome to the 2021 Reading Gladiators™ challenges. Let the reading begin!

There are schools in this group:

Updates

  • Submission by St Frideswide C E Primary School

    Our Star of Ishta

    We loved reading this book and discussing the characters and their changing relationships in particular.

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    Comments

    Caroline Bradley
    Caroline Bradley 6th Apr 2021, 10:49am
    What a beautiful star and some well chosen quotations from this intriguing story. I think the words you have chosen to describe this book are well suited and varied - I hope they will encourage others to pick up Tamarind and the Star of Ishta.
  • Submission by Knockhall Primary School

    Knockhall Primary House By the Lake

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    Comments

    Caroline Bradley
    Caroline Bradley 6th Apr 2021, 10:44am
    Well done Year 5 Gladiators! A super poem inspired by this fantastic book. The personification of the house works well and the half rhyme towards the middle gives a suitably unsettling feel. The ending is clever and I like the inclusion of the mouse - the stories he could tell!

  • Week 2: Tamarind and the Star of Ishta

    Now that the children had read more of the book, we discussed about Tamarind’s character in greater depth, putting our ideas onto a circle thinking map. We also held a ‘Quescussion’, a discussion featuring mainly questions. The children came up with some excellent, thoughtful questions and worked wonderfully well together to make statements in response to them. Their efforts were later shared through Twitter, and Jasbinder Bilan herself complemented them on their work. 🙂

  • Week 1: Tamarind and the Star of Ishta

    The Year 5 team started their journey with the second book of the programme, written by Jasbinder Bilan. During our first discussion about the book, we talked about what we knew about Tamarind from the first two chapters. Then, we developed a word hoard, talking about various words and their meanings using pictures to help us.

  • Week 1: The House By The Lake

    Before they were given the book, the Year 5 Reading Gladiators wrote what they thought it would be about. In addition, they worked hard on creating informative fact files about Berlin, the setting for our book. Looking at the history of Germany’s capital in particular helped the Reading Gladiators to understand the events that occurred alongside the house’s timeline.

  • Week 4: The House By The Lake

    Some excellent home learning was demonstrated by the Year 5 team as the children had a go at writing diary entries as one of the children featured in the book. They also listened to my story video of ‘House Held By Trees’, a different picture book with a similar theme, and afterwards, they made interesting comparisons between both stories. In the session itself, we all worked together to create our group poem about an abandoned house for the RG mini challenge. We ended up with an abandoned house being the perfect home for a little mouse! We hope that you enjoy our poem 🙂

  • Week 3: The House By The Lake

    During our first week back at Knockhall after the lock down, the Year 5 team continued their discussion on personification and talked about the meanings of those shown in the book. Then, the children thought about how the house would describe some of the events. Using the concept ‘If these walls could talk, they wrote short stories with the house as the narrator. Their responses were awesome! 🙂

  • Week 2: The House By The Lake

    In the lead up to our virtual session (hosted via Google Meets during the third lock down), the Year 5 team came up with questions that they would like to ask. During the session itself, we looked at these questions and discussed the possible answers to them, using the brief history highlighted at the back of the book. The session was very engaging, as we each showed an artefact from the Second World War and talked about them. We also watched a video showing what the house looks like today and to finish, we talked about personification and found examples within our book. The whole session was absolutely brilliant and a joy to be part of 🙂

  • Welcome to the Reading Gladiators Challenge 2021

    We are so excited to finally launch Reading Gladiators 2020/2021. With new books and a new look on the website, you should be fully equipped to start your Reading Gladiators group in January. Your login will give you access to the guides. All the details you need are in the Running Your Reading Gladiators Group guide, including the mini-challenge dates for each title. We hope you enjoy the first title The House By the Lake and we look forward to meeting your groups online next term. In the meantime we wish you a happy and restful Christmas break.