Year 5 get emotional

Excited? Angry? Proud? Nervous? Year 5 were all of these, and more, in English this week, as they considered how they could describe a character’s feelings and characteristics in an African traditional tale.

Much hilarity ensued as they acted out different emotions in pairs, trying to guess each other’s characteristics solely from their body language and the way in which they spoke. Emilie’s ‘embarrassment’ was clear from the hunch of her shoulders and downcast eyes, Toby’s ‘pride’ was evident from his straight back and puffed out chest. Erina was ‘excited’ for most of the lesson, which she demonstrated with a lot of jumping up and saying ‘Yay!’. They had to work harder with other characteristics - ‘patience’ and ‘determination’ were harder to show through gesture.

Acting over, Year 5 put all they had learned into practice in their writing. They described the different ways in which their African animal characters might move, stand, gesture and speak to show their character. They tried to match emotions to appropriate animals. Impala, we thought, were rather skittish; lions were a little arrogant.

Keep practising at home, Year 5. See if you can recognise and describe the ways in which emotions and characteristics are shown by the people around you. Does your sister’s face so red when she gets annoyed? Does your friend lean in towards you when he can see you are upset? You can use all these ideas in your writing...