Filling in the Gaps

This week in Year 6, while lots of the year were out representing BNIS in a friendly hockey tournament, those at school began to start missing their friends and looking at the spaces and gaps that they had left.

This inspired them to create black out poetry using old books. The children created poems, using the words left in the negative space when the rest of the page was obscured. In order to achieve this, the children circled interesting phrases and words that they found on the pages of the book. Then they had to decide which words and phrases went together well to make a poem, adding or taking away words as they went. They could use any of the words on the page, but they were unable to change the order and this was challenging.

Some of the class used the traditional black markers to obscure the unwanted text, whilst others were inspired to illustrate using the themes found hidden within the pages. Although all the poems were made from the same book, the outcomes were all very different and the children thoroughly enjoyed trying out different combinations of words and phrases to see the different effects they would have.

During Art, we continued with the theme of negative spaces. Using white and black card, the children were challenged to cut out different shapes using craft knives and scissors. They then had to arrange the pieces, showing the negative space left behind. The children showed a lot of perseverance and concentration during this session, keeping track of all the different pieces of card and making sure they were cut out accurately and neatly was not easy! The children could use any design they liked, some chose to do random patterns, whilst others chose to use objects, such as scissors. The effects were all different, but all the children were pleased with the result. We are so pleased to have the hockey players back in the classroom and all those empty spaces filled.