After reading "Pond Web" a number of times during our shared reading time in the Literacy Hour, we decided to go and explore our school pond. This activity was part of our Science work. We predicted the animals that we might find in the pond and then explored the pond as a whole class with the teacher demonstrating a safe pond dipping technique. We swept the net back and forwards four times in the water then carefully placed the catch into a shallow tray which already had a small amount of water in it. We discussed what we had discovered and were really excited to find some caddis-fly nymphs just like in the story! Children then worked in pairs with an adult to see what they could find using the same technique. They choose one animal to bring back to the classroom in a small pot to produce a careful drawing. As a whole class we made a list of all the different animals that we had discovered and tried to put them into a food chain - comparing it closely to the food chain in "Pond Web". During our shared writing time we began to use the structure of "Pond Web" to write our own class story using the food chain that we had discovered in our pond. We looked at the structure of the story on the Computer screen and then scribed their version on an adjacent board. It was a good opportunity to start to think about doing words to replace those used in the original story. For example "Splish" and "Splash". This activity carried through to our word level work where we concentrated on brain-storming different verbs that we could use in our story. We wrote the whole story over three shared writing sessions. Jo Leech (Sellindge County Primary School).