Mr Friend’s English groupWeek 10

SPAG: Year 5 spelling patternsReading: Answers to the

questions you asked Miss Wilson’s Grandad

English: Mixed writing types focussing on food rationing

Every day there is a SPAG activity; and there is an English task.

The reading activity this week includes the answers to the questions you asked

Miss Wilson’s Grandad before half term. You can read it all in one go or read a

slide each day – you choose!

This week’s English includes a range of types of writing activities but they are all

based around the topic of food rationing which quite a few of you asked to find out

more about when I asked you before half term.

Week 10 ReadingThank you so much for the questions lots of you asked my Grandad. He really enjoyed writing the answers and hopefully you will enjoy reading them! I have put some of the questions together as some were very similar but hopefully you will find your answer below! If you didn’t write one, don’t worry, you can still use this as your reading task this week as there is quite a lot here! Perhaps you could read a page a day as there are 5 in total.

What sort of food did you have?

We were lucky with the food situation because the house that I lived in during the war, in Sussex Road, had a big back garden and so we grew a lot of vegetables and we also had a few chickens to give us eggs. We also had ration books which meant you could only buy a set amount of food a week – dairy products in particular were almost impossible to get hold of! My tea time sandwich was a plain bread and jam though my favourite was bread and pork dripping. Because there was a child in the house (me), we were allowed one extra egg a week. My Gran used to make the most delicious mutton stews. I remember that nothing was wasted – all of the local fruit you could get was bottled up or made into jam. I was very fortunate as I lived with my Aunt, my Gran and my Mum who were all great cooks.

Week 10 ReadingDid you use the air raid shelter a lot?

We didn’t have an air raid shelter at the beginning of the war so if the siren went off then my Mum would put me under the kitchen sink. Later on when we had a very heavy bomb raid I would spend the night sleeping in our shelter. We were lucky as our shelter was indoors and we put it together ourselves. It sounds quite fun looking back!

Did you do home schooling during the war?

Not really because I was very young. There was no television or home entertainment so I learnt to read and write at quite an early age. To this day my favourite occupation is reading and writing.

Did you get evacuated during the war?

I wasn’t evacuated and I don’t think many children from this area were. Most evacuees were from cities or places that were high risk from bombing like those with dockyards or factories. We are classed as a rural area so I think we were well down the list, thankfully.

What sort of air raid shelter did you have?

We had an indoor shelter called a Morrison shelter. Ours was in the front room and it was made of solid iron. It was about 6 foot by 6 foot and about 3 feet high. It was alright for a short period of time but you would not want to spend hours in it. My Gran put a red table cloth over it and a vase of flowers so it looked just like the dining table.

Week 10 Reading

Was it nice seeing your Dad for the first time after the war?

I was about six years old when I first met my Dad after the war so I has no idea who he was. It most likely took me a few months to get used to this stranger taking me and my Mum out and about, and I was most likely spoilt.

What jobs did your Dad have during the war?

War broke out in September 1939 and my father was a military man and already belonged to the territorial army, so he volunteered for the army straight away. Then he became a Sergeant Major and part of the famous Desert Rats.

Was Tonbridge bombed a lot during the war?

Tonbridge did have quite a lot of bombs dropped on it. I think it was because Tonbridge had a large railway freight terminal and the Germans were after that. The nearest bomb to us fell in the next road, it blew up two houses and damaged a lot of others.

Did the sirens go off because German bombs were here?

Yes, as the planes approached the town the sirens would go off so you had time to get to a shelter. They didn’t always drop bombs, sometimes the planes would fly straight over and then the all clear siren would sound and you could come out of the shelter.

Week 10 Reading

How did you feel when the war was taking place?

I can’t really answer this question because I was very young and wasn’t really aware of what was going on in the world. My world meant playing with my toys and running to the shelter when the siren went off.

Did you hear an air raid siren? Were you scared?

Yes everybody heard the siren. It was set up near the old fire station (near the swimming pool) and so it didn’t matter where you were in town you heard it. I was too young to be scared.

How did you find out the war had ended?

That’s easy – one day it was all blacked-out windows and people carrying gas masks and the next day it was people out in the street laughing, talking, waving flags and having parties. The atmosphere changed over night – it could have been pouring with rain but as far as we were concerned the sun was shining.

Did your family’s jobs change during the war?

Yes they did. My Uncle Ben was a part time postman and at night he became an air raid warden. My Auntie Kath worked in a pub during the war, my Mum was a taxi driver and my Gran looked after the house and did the cooking.

Week 10 Reading

What was life like in Tonbridge and how did it change?

I don’t really know what life was like in Tonbridge before the war but I think after the war things did change. The country was in a state and needed rebuilding so people had to change their way of life and start putting everything back together again.

How did food change when rationing stopped?

Food rationing didn’t just stop overnight. It was gradually phased out over the course of a few years. Being a child, the big change I noticed was having sweets, ice cream and to try fruits I had never even seen before – bananas, grapes, pineapples.

Just a note to add – I was just a child when the war took place and so these are my memories and I might have got a few facts wrong but hopefully it gives you some idea of what life was like back then.

From Terry Randall (Miss Wilson’s Grandad)

Monday SPAG

Monday EnglishThink carefully about what you have learnt about rationing so far through topic and English lessons; and also try to think back to the start of ‘lockdown’ when there were shortages of many things, such as toilet roll…. strange!Start off by answering these ‘thinking questions’ – what do you think at the moment about rationing? Then watch the video and read the additional information and add to your answers.

1.

3.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7e5oygzUrs42.

http://www.primaryhomeworkhelp.co.uk/war/rationing.htm

Tuesday SPAG

Tuesday SPAG Answers:

Tuesday EnglishRead the information below and then answer the questions on the next page. The answers are on the page after that.

Tuesday English

Tuesday English answers:

Wednesday SPAG

Wednesday EnglishToday you are going to think about the recipes that people might have used to try and make as many meals as possible with the food they were given. As many items were rationed, people had to be very clever as getting the most out of things and they became good atadapting meals they had eaten before or creating new ones.

Task:Your task is to read the two recipes below and re-write them with some improvements using what you can recall about a good set of instructions. You can include: interesting adjectives, adverbs, time adverbials and add in top tips to make it more interesting for the reader.You could then have a go at making the actual recipes – let us know what they taste like!

Thursday SPAG

Thursday SPAG answers

Thursday EnglishToday and tomorrow we would like you to spend some time comparing the food we eat now and the food that people might have eaten during the war.For today’s task you need to complete two menus – one including your current food that you eat (if you are fussy you might need to think about what people in your family eat too!) and the other menu is what a typical family might have eaten during the war in Britain (other countries will be different due to what they imported and grew at home. If your family lived in another country during the war then you could look at this too – some of you might find it interesting to do that anyway!).

Menu 1 – your meals now:

Thursday EnglishMenu 2 – meals from the war time (use the information you have learnt so far, and some I’ve put below, to help you):

Friday SPAG

Friday EnglishToday you will compare the food from the past to now using the menus you created yesterday. You also need to use what you have found out this week about food that was eaten by people in Britain during the war.Look at the statements below and then write a few sentences for each one stating whether you agree or disagree with them. Make sure you give reasons for each one using an appropriate conjunction such as – because, since, due to the fact that…