Shape Sentence Jungles

Shape Sentence Jungles

Creating simple descriptive sentences using a  noun, a verb and an adjective to create a jungle animal.

This evening at JLN training,my colleagues and I were discussingwriting simple sentences with Year 4 children  next half term , when weteach the children about jungle animals . It’s one of our favourite units in the JLN  SOW and we are alwayslooking for ways to enhance what we do.

The children have learned about nouns and adjectives as components  of a simple sentence.We have practised coloursand sizes but have not as yet practisedthe position of adjectives and agreement of adjectives in target languages

We want to be creative with the simple sentence structureand language.This year we are going to try writing shape sentences both asphysical sentences and also as written descriptions of our jungle animals .

Physical sentences

Hand out to three children in the class, three cards – anoun , a verb and an adjective that describe one of the jungle animals- for example the giraffe 

Stand the three children in a row holding up their cards sothat they are visible to the rest of the class. Make sure the children are in arandom order – so stand the child with the adjective at the start of the line,the child with the noun in the middle and the child with the verb at the end ofthe row.

Can a volunteer reorganise the cards into a sentence for you so thatit makes sense by moving the children into the correct position? 

Now can a second volunteer create a shape sentence . Forexample if it’s a giraffe we are describing then can we create a long tallshape with the noun at the top , the verb in the middle and the adjective atthe bottom

If it’s a snake  …….

then we need to create a wiggly word sentence like this.....

If it’s an elephant then maybe our word shape will have anoun for the trunk , a verb for the body and an adjective for the tail .

Shape Sentence Jungle.

Can the children put their jungle animals into their junglesetting? This activity leads on well from the above activity . The children needto draw a picture of their jungle backdrop and then write shape sentences for each of the animals in their jungle . They can selectfour animals. They can use more than one adjective to describe an animal and they need to createtheir shape sentences so that they flow as a written sentence  , therefore noun , verb and adjective/adjectives and look like the shape of the animal .

Can other children in the class find and identify the jungle shape sentences. 

Use wonderful art work such as Rousseau's pictures of jungle animals to inspire the children to create shape sentence jungle art and camouflage this in their jungle pictures  !