Romans on the Rampage

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Week commencing 06.01.2021: calendar, breath, bicycle, peculiar, weight, height, circle, favourite. I would recommend this book to 8-10 year olds because younger may not understand some of the language in it.

My favourite part in the story was at the start when it told me about the boys dream to be a chariot racer. Chariot Champions is a quite short and funny book about a typical family in Ancient Rome. The story is narrated by a snarky and self-obsessed raven who describes the adventures of the family when the father is accused of fraud and arrested, as well as Hysteria and Scorcha (the ex-slave charioteer) and their love affair, as well as Perilus' dream to become a charioteer. Lots of the characters have amusing names - like Hysteria, who always cries, or Fibbus Biggus, the man who accuses the father of fraud. The anachronistic inventions of Maddusbananus the inventor are also funny.To help us we use the question words: Who, Where, What, When, Why and How. I have added a video which will talk you through the steps you need to follow.

Tia: I really enjoyed this book. I think the book isn’t realistic but there was a lot of funny parts. I learnt a lot more Latin words from the book. I particularly liked Croakbag the raven. He, in my opinion, is the funniest character. Also, Croakbag is the person, that tells the story! Jeremy Strong is a brilliant author. I would like to read more of his books now! I loved his ideas and his books are amazing!Jeremy Strong’s is good book for 11 and over because it has quite hard words in and you’ve got to keep up with the story because it adds on lots of information like words in Latin. I personally didn’t like the book but other people might. This book is a book that could help people learn a different language (bits of it). I don’t think this tells you a lot about history. It just says Latin words and about a chariot race. I don’t think it is very historical but some people might like reading it because they think it is fun. My favourite character in his book is Croakbag because is always very funny, he loves saying he is the ‘cleverest raven in the world’, he really likes biscuits and he teaches you Latin every now and then through the book. You will love him! My favourite part was when they first stared to break out of prison because every one gets scared of the ginormous elephant when it distracts everyone with its huge sneeze. Look at the paragraph which begins with “No, they’re not!” Sum up what happened in this paragraph in 20 words or less.

I am interested in Roman times. I like learning about Gladiators and the towns Romans lived in but I think the book didn’t inspire me even more. To find out about history I prefer more factual books. An example of speech may be. The Ogre caught glimpse of the children watching him, the Ogre was petrified and he instantly jumped into the air and screamed loudly, “ Ahhhh, who are you? What are you doing here?”Firstly no one will own up to it and secondly, it would take donkey’s years! So he has to make a plan… It is a story which is told through the eyes of a raven. He visits different places and meets different people like the emperor. I like Jeremy Strong as an author because his stories are funny. I am reading at the moment his book called My Brothers Famous Bottom Gets Pinched!

Here is a list of 8 words from our statutory word list, please can you choose 8 of these spellings to practice writing. Make sure you are using your best handwriting! If you want to challenge yourself try and place these words into full sentences. Some of the Roman names are hard to read and so made it difficult to follow each character at times but I enjoyed the book, it was easy to read and funny at times. Can you now use a dictionary to come up with as many different words for said as you can e.g. screamed, shouted, replied. Remember said is the past tense of say. Your task is to copy out these spellings, and then practice spelling the words without looking at them. Focus on making sure the ending of the words are spelled correctly. The part I liked the least was when the author was talking to a crow from the past. The book would have been better if the author had missed the crow out altogether.

Our grammar session this week will focus on direct speech. This is when a character is talking within a story. We punctuate this using inverted commas and always have a form of punctuation inside them e.g. comma or full stop. I have included a video to show you how we do this.