Winnie at the seaside - Learning Sequence

The 'Winnie at the Seaside' learning sequence is an engaging unit overview planned over three weeks, aimed at enhancing children's literacy skills. In the first week, students are invited to examine the front cover of the book and write predictions about Winnie's adventures. This is followed by an exploration of images of Winnie, where children annotate a picture with nouns and develop noun phrases to enrich their descriptions of the character. As they delve into the initial pages of the story, they express Winnie's thoughts and feelings through thought bubbles, both while she's in her garden and as she flies to the seaside. The sequence continues with reading and activities that prompt children to use adjectives to describe the beach, construct sentences, and write a postcard from Winnie's perspective. They also predict plot developments and explore alternative scenarios for Winnie's broomstick adventures, culminating in a recount of Winnie's day at the seaside from her own point of view.

Weeks four to six introduce 'Sharing a Shell', prompting a fresh round of predictions from the children about the story's potential problems. Through reading and discussion, the children explore character feelings, particularly focusing on the crab and his interaction with other sea creatures. They annotate images with adjectives, build descriptive noun phrases, and write thought bubbles and feeling hearts to express the crab's emotions. The sequence encourages the children to discuss the story's rhyming pattern and to invent their own characters who might want to share the shell, using the established rhyming scheme. As the story unfolds, the children explore themes of space, feelings of loneliness, and pride, leading to a retelling of the story through the crab's perspective. The unit is designed to develop comprehension, vocabulary, and writing skills, with activities that include sequencing the story and completing an emotions graph to track the characters' feelings throughout the narrative.