A Rough Guide to the UK
A Rough Guide to the UK
RATIONALE:
After being shown lots of different pictures from around the UK, teachers will explain that although they live in the UK so many parts are so very different geographically and we don’t know very much about it all! We decided that we would spend the term learning about different geographical features of the UK and open a tourist centre for our parents and carers to attend. Throughout the project, children will also explore other famous Britons: they will write biographies about Mary Anning and write an alternative ending for British classic The Iron Man by Ted Hughes. On top of this, children will learn about British artist LS Lowry and recreate some of his iconic British industrial skylines. All of which will be on display at the tourist centre.
Home Learning
During our initial exploration of Iron Man by Ted Hughes, we have made predictions and answered questions about the text using inference skills
We then began to look at how Ted Hughes had used language to build a picture of the iron man and the cliff scene in the reader's head. We explored alliteration, use of adjectives and expanded noun phrases, personification and similes. After this, we learnt that Ted Hughes was also a very famous poet so we write a poem using our knowledge of figurative language and prepositional phrases.
Learning about Lowry! Today, we learnt a little about Lowry: when he lived (placed on our class time line!), when he became famous (not until he was 52 which inspired a conversation about resilience and perseverance), where he was based etc. We also had a look at some of his paintings, looking to see if we could see similarities and differences. Then, using a viewfinder, we chose a section of 'Going to Work' and tried to recreate it in Lowry's style using oil pastels.
Today, we have been learning about Lowry's matchstick men. In order to try to recreate them in Lowry's style, we have explored using different tools for the job - cotton buds, paintbrushes, fingers and glue spreaders. As we explored, we analysed whether the tools were easy to use or whether we were successful in recreating Lowry's style
Colour Mixing - Lowry claimed to have used only 5 colours in his paintings. Vermilion, prussian blue, yellow ochre, ivory black and flake white. We considered why he chose these colours. Once we had learnt about how to make tones, shades and tints using black and white, we had a go at using the primary colours and the black and white to mix colours similar to Lowry's
Today, we explored the foreground, midground and background of landscape pictures. We investigated how Lowry had used perspective by making objects smaller to appear further away. We also looked at hoe he used faded, washed out colours for the background to create atmospheric perspective.
