English
The Curriculum at Laceby Stanford Primary Academy
The Intent, implementation and Impact of our Curriculum – English.
Intent
At Laceby Stanford Primary Academy, English and the teaching of English is the foundation of our curriculum. Our main aim is to ensure every single child becomes literate and progresses in the areas of reading, writing, speaking and listening.
We feel it is vital to highlight and be aware of the differing groups of learners and vulnerable children in their classes. Once this information is acquired, teachers can plan and teach personalised English lessons which focus on the particular needs of each child. We recognise that each child has their own starting point upon entry to every year group and progress is measured in line with these starting points to ensure every child can celebrate success.
We believe that English at Laceby Stanford Primary Academy should not only be a daily discrete lesson, but is at the cornerstone of the entire curriculum. It is embedded within all our lessons and we will strive for a high level of English for all. Through using high-quality texts, immersing children in vocabulary rich learning environments and ensuring new curriculum expectations and the progression of skills are met, the children at Laceby Stanford Primary Academy will be exposed to a language heavy, creative and continuous English curriculum which will not only enable them to become literate but will also develop a love of reading, creative writing and purposeful speaking and listening.
At Laceby Stanford Primary Academy, our vision is for creativity to be at the helm of our English curriculum and for children to learn new skills in a fun and engaging way.
Implementation
Reading
With these aims in mind, a timetable has been established that ensures a discrete lesson for teaching reading and reading comprehension is incorporated into each day for all years from Foundation to Year 6. This ensures that reading is explicitly taught every day and that all children have access to excellent reading techniques. The journey of reading starts with Phonics teaching. At Laceby Stanford Primary Academy we follow the Ruth Miskin Read Write Inc. scheme. All vulnerable groups are highlighted and support staff used to support these groups further to ensure progression and specific year group skills are secure. Resources to support and enhance these lessons (such as Cracking Comprehension Grammarsaurus) are used so that all staff feel proficient and skilled in delivering these sessions effectively. Children are not only learning comprehension skills but also independence, a love of wider reading and experiencing an exposure to rich vocabulary, which is key in all sessions for all learners.
Reading is celebrated in classrooms and around school, you will find displays which celebrate authors, children’s favourite books and reading reward schemes. In addition, throughout the school year the importance of reading is enhanced through World Book Day, author and poet visits, parent reading workshops and a range of trips and visits which enrich and complement children’s learning.
Writing
We believe that consistent and well-taught English is the foundation of a valuable education, and so at Laceby Stanford Primary Academy we ensure that the teaching of writing is purposeful, robust and shows clear progression for all children. In line with the new national curriculum, we ensure that each year group is taught the explicit grammar, punctuation and spelling objectives required for their age group. These are again timetabled into discreet spelling and grammar lessons as well as teachers giving pupils a range of opportunities to embed their skills through English lessons and cross-curricular writing opportunities thus exposing children to a variety of genres. Writing is often taught, through the use of a quality text. This text is purposefully selected in order to expose the children to inference, high-level vocabulary, a range of punctuation and characterisation, also giving the children different high quality opportunities for real writing tasks as well as to promote a love of reading and engagement for all children.
The assessment of writing is fluid. All year groups use the same format for assessing writing which have been produced in line with the end of Key Stage assessment frameworks as published by the Department for Education.
Impact
The impact on our children is clear: progress, sustained learning and transferrable skills. With the high quality discreet and embedded English teaching taking place at Laceby Stanford Primary Academy, our children are becoming confident readers and writers. Their enthusiasm for both are evident throughout the curriculum and standards are continually improving. Writing across the curriculum at Laceby Stanford Primary Academy is important and shows progression, a high standard of applied skills and is beautifully presented with pride by our pupils. We hope that as our children move on from us to further their education and learning, that their creativity; passion for English and high aspirations travel with them and continue to grow and develop as they do.
Useful websites
Oxford Owl
This is an award-winning free website packed with expert advice, top tips, eBooks and activities to help you support your child's reading and maths at home.
Phonics Play
The free area of the PhonicsPlay website is filled with free interactive games, phonics planning, assessment ideas and printable resources. There is lots of advice to support parents in helping their children learn to read.
WRITING SHARE
Today the Year 1 children held a Learning Share for parents/carers to attend in their classroom. Year 1 pupils showed their grown ups how we use phonics charts to support our spelling and writing. We showcased our beautiful writing skills by pretending to be in The Deep (which was our recent trip destination) and sending a postcard to a family member. Children were able to then draw illustrations before getting them ready to post, by inserting their address.
Parents shared their thoughts:
Parent 1: Great to see how well the children have been progressing with their writing.
Parent 2: The sounds board was very interesting to see in action
Parent 3: Good insight into learning, this helps us carry on the learning at home to help him improve.
Parent 4: We enjoyed today's learning share, it was nice to do something different.
Parent 5: It was very good to something creative together.
Parent 6: We really enjoyed being involved and seeing how far he has progressed. It was brilliant watching him in the classroom environment and how happy he is.
Thank you to all who came and for sharing your positive thoughts with us.
Animal Hunt in the Library
This week Year 1s have been on a visit to the library to find some books about wild animals. As part of our Science learning we are investigating land animals and Mrs Wink said we could borrow some books about them. Firstly we remembered all about what Non-Fiction books were and looked at where they are in the library. Next, we looked at and chose the books we were going to borrow. Finally we stamped our books so we knew when to return them. We are going to use these books to learn about mammals, reptiles, amphibians and birds. We told Mrs Wink why we chose each book:
Pupil A: I like this book about polar bears because they live where it is cold.
Pupil B: I chose this because it has different animals in it.
Pupil C: This one looks good because it has photos and writing about the photos.
We all said thank you to Mrs Wink.
World Book Day 2025: A wonderful day full of stories!
Year 2
The Year 2 children had a great time celebrating World Book Day. It was lovely to see them all dressed up as their favourite book characters and enjoying reading lots of books.
“I like World Book Day because you get to dress up and you can bring in your favourite book.”
“I like taking my books outside and reading at playtime.”
“We wrote about our costumes and drew a picture of ourselves.”
“I enjoyed listening to a penguin story and writing a book review.”
“It was fun to get crafty and make a penguin puppet. I really enjoyed it.”
Year 3
In Year 3 we have been celebrating World Book Day by coming up with our music for a part of a book we had been looking at in English. We used djembes to create our music!
“I created music for when the Stone Age boy falls down, so I wanted to music to be loud and quick”
“I focused on when the Stone Age boy and Om see a bear, I made the music quick like their heart beats would be seeing a bear!”
Year 6
Year 6 had a fantastic day for World book day and used their character skills to write a postcard from one character to another. We then took part in the Live assembly and worked with year 4 to read together and enjoy the outdoors. In the afternoon pupils designed their own flying maxhine linked to the book ‘fArther’ by Grahame Baker- Smith
Reading at Laceby Stanford Primary Academy Guide for EYFS parents
Information
Download "I can" English target sheets
A parents guide to the new National Curriculum (not Foundation/Seedlngs class). More information can be found on the Rising Stars website
Reading
2024 Phonics Screening Test for Year 1s
This year’s test will take place between Monday 10th and Friday 14th June. This will be a relaxed quiz, with an adult who your child knows well and will be as fun as possible. The following information can be viewed for further guidance:
Government Guidance for Parents:
Information for parents from Government Website
Short Video:
Short video explaining the test
Practise Resource
Phonics screening check
Pupils’ materials
World Book Day 2025: A wonderful day full of stories!
Reading for Information: Animal Facts
Enchanting Christmas Stories at Laceby Library
Sharing and Editing our Writing
A Brilliant Reading Breakfast!
Barley Class Reading Breakfast
Buttercup visit to Stanford Library
Pumpkin Class Reading Breakfast
Pumpkin class visit the library
Drama to portray a short film 🎥
Year 6 focus in English is narratives with flashbacks where they have been studying the short film ‘Mourning Dove’. Pupils created different still images to portray the film using drama skills, emotions and teamwork. How amazing are these still images?!?
Year 4 - Visit to the library
The children enjoyed having the opportunity to visit the library and do some research on the Mayan Civilisation and rainforests. They had lots of questions to ask Mrs Wink and enjoyed looking at non-fiction texts to find out interesting facts. For example...
There are 1,500 species of fish in the Amazon river Rainforests are wet and sticky because plants release water that they don't need. We learnt so much in a short time.
Reading for Information: Animal Facts
The Year 2 children really enjoyed their visit to Laceby Library to explore a wide variety of books all about animals.
‘Mrs. Wink showed us fiction and non-fiction books.’
‘I told everyone that I wanted to find out information about red pandas.’
‘It was exciting because we got to look at lots of books and take some books back to school with us.’
‘We shared our animal facts with the class. I learnt lots of facts about frogs.’
‘I think we are so lucky to have a library in Laceby. I like to go every week with my mum and read books.’
‘I know lots of new animal facts now which will help me in Science.’
Writing Collaboration ✍️
Pupils from Year 6 worked collaboratively with Year 4 pupils to edit and improve their writing using editing stations. Editing stations are designated areas where pupils can independently review and improve their work, focusing on specific aspects of editing like grammar, punctuation, spelling or sentence structure. Scaffold and visual aids guide the pupils focus. Year 6 pupils modelled and supported pupils in Year 4 on how to edit their work effectively, amazing collaboration!
Year 6 Alma English
Pupils in Year 6 have been using the short film Alma to create a narrative piece of writing. In this session we learnt how to express the emotions of a character by tracking moments of suspense and tension in a story. We first listened to the short film, how the change in sound and pace moved the narrative along and then plotted this on an emotions graph.
Look Up
On their space hook day, the Year 2 children enjoyed learning about the author Nathan Bryon. They read his book called ‘Look Up’ which was about a little girl who was lucky enough to see a meteor shower. The children answered questions about the story and wrote their own book reviews.
Blackout Poetry
Year 5 children have been making a start on their new class text, Viking Boy. For one activity this week, we had a go at making our own "blackout poetry". This is when you take a written piece of text from a book, newspaper, or magazine and redact words, in order to come up with your very own poetry, selecting words or phrases for impact.
The Rainbow Fish
This week Year 1s have been learning about sharing, through the wonderful book 'The Rainbow Fish'. We used drama and art and craft to make the characters in the story, re-enact the story and understand the feelings of others.
Pupil 1: Rainbow Fish was beautiful because he was covered in sparkly scales.
Pupil 2: He was mean to the other fish and would not share his shiny scales.
Pupil 3: He asked the wise octopus what he should do and he told Rainbow Fish to share his scales and he would know happiness.
Pupil 4: We shared the pretty scales like in the story so we could all have one.
Pupil 5: We learnt that sharing makes friendship.
Mrs Claus' Bakery
Foundation stage are all enjoying our outdoor role play area that is currently Mrs Claus' Bakery.
Practicing our oracy skills, has provided the children with opportunities to take on different roles using appropriate knowledge and vocabulary.
For example:
"How many gingerbread men would you like today?"
"Ok I will get those for you. One moment"
"These gingerbread men taste delicious"
Enchanting Christmas Stories at Laceby Library
The Year 2 children had a wonderful time visiting the library to explore some lovely Christmas stories with Mrs. Wink.
They were very keen to answer and ask lots of questions about Christmas and also the stories.
Thank you for inviting us Mrs. Wink!
"I love listening to Mrs. Wink read stories. She has a lovely voice."
"I liked choosing some Christmas stories for us to take back to school."
"I didn't know that the library has so many Christmas books. I am definitely going to go back and read some of them"
Oracy in Year 1
As part of our PSHE work on friendships, we practised our oracy skills.
We were using the terms ‘I agree…’ and ‘I disagree…’
We are learning to discuss issues, and if we disagree, we have to do this politely.
Child A: ‘I think the girl is helping the boy so it’s a friendly behaviour.’
Child B: ‘I disagree because the boy looks like he has an angry face.’
Child A: ‘Oh yes, so it must be unfriendly behaviour.’
Sharing and Editing our Writing
In Year 1 we have been learning how to edit our writing by reading it to a buddie.
When we are finished, we sit on the carpet with a buddie and read our writing together.
This is helping us to spot any missing words, punctuation and also to check it makes sense.
We look forward to sharing our writing with you.
Child 1: I like to read my writing to a friend.
Child 2: My buddie will help me to get it right.
Child 3: We work together to check full stops at the end of sentences.
Year 3 Physical Oracy Skills
Year 3 have been using our physical oracy skills in English. We used role-play to plan what we might have said in the situation where we were protesting about the king banning the dark. We then used what we had said from the role-play in our news article. Whilst we were performing, we had to consider our position and posture when addressing our audience.
Year 2 Oracy Skills
Our lovely Year 2 pupil gave a wonderful 'show and tell' session for his peers. He demonstrated how to use a special dome magnifying glass to read a book and how it would help him with his reading in lessons. He also explained how to clean it and how it should be stored carefully. The children all listened very carefully.
"I've been given this magnifier to help me with my eyesight. I want everyone to see how it works."
"When a book has smaller letters, I move the magnifier across the words and it makes them look so much bigger. This will be very good for me because I will be able to read everything now!"
"It is made of glass and it is very special. I have a little cloth to clean it and it has to be put into the box carefully."
"You might get chance to use it with me when I am doing partner reading."
Year 1 Reading Breakfast
This week Year 1 have hosted a special breakfast for their grown-ups to attend.
We provided fresh bread, fruit and juices for all and enjoyed sharing books.
It was great to see so many visitors joining us, thank you to those who came.
Pupils shared their views afterwards:
Pupil 1: It was great because my little sisters came too and we all shared stories.
Pupil 2: My Grandma enjoyed the bread.
Pupil 3: I showed my Mum the phonics things in our room.
Pupil 4: My brother always loves coming in to school to see me.
A Brilliant Reading Breakfast!
The Year 2 children enjoyed sharing books and delicious food with their family, friends and community members. It was great to see everyone enjoying reading together!
“I loved it because I got to read with my mum and there was yummy food like oranges, grapes and bananas. I read Paddington at Buckingham Palace and it was my favourite book.”
“It was wonderful. My mum came and I read my favourite book called Milly’s First Day of Magic School.”
“I could read my book to my mummy. It was amazing and so interesting.”
“My Dad enjoyed reading to me too.”
“I loved reading to my parents. It was fun with delicious food.”
Parent and Carers Feedback
“I really enjoy coming into school and reading with my son. It makes me feel proud of how far he has come.”
“A lovely reading breakfast, we thoroughly enjoyed it.”
“Some good reading and nice snacks.”
“Such a lovely morning at Y2 reading breakfast; thank you for organising it.”
We ❤️ Reading
Our new home reading scheme has been a huge success in Year 6! The wide variety of books have grabbed everyone’s attention and shown how much Barley pupils love to read! This week we achieved 83% of pupils who had read 3 times of more this week!! Amazing work Barley… keep it up!!!
Reading Response
Our first book study in Year 1 is ‘Lubna and Pebble’. This story is about friendship and feelings. Lubna – a girl in the story – makes a friend out of a pebble she finds in her new home. To understand how she felt, we all made a ‘pebble friend’. We washed our pebbles and drew smiley faces on them – just as Lubna did.
We loved giving our friends a name and talking to them, pretending to be the girl in the story.
Now we are taking them home and plan to find a warm place for them to sleep, just as Lubna did in Winter.
Pupil 1: I loved pretending to get off the ship and go on the beach to find a pebble.
Pupil 2: I washed my pebble clean and now it’s got a golden smile.
Pupil 3: I think Lubna must have been lonely without a real friend.
Pupil 4: Lubna took care of her pebble friend. We take care of our real friends.
Year 1 Reading Picnic
It was a beautiful sunny afternoon for our Reading Picnic event yesterday. Children in Year 1 invited their grown-ups from home to enjoy decorated cakes and juice and to show off their reading talents. We were pleased to host parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters. All enjoyed listening to the children read and enjoying the books. Comments included: “It was great to hear my child read, he has made so much progress with his reading this year,” “thank you for letting us visit again this year, I am so impressed how much their reading has come on since Foundation,” “It has been great to see what they have been doing, thank you.” We also enjoyed seeing Mrs Wink (our governor for English and Library co-ordinator in Laceby) she commented on how good it was to see so many visitors in school and all enjoying reading.
Children said:
“We loved icing the cakes this morning to get ready,”
“My Grandad came and it was great to see him too,”
“I shared my Dad with my friend and he read to us both,”
“I love reading outside!”
Spectacular Celebration
This week all Year 1 pupils have worked hard at their Phonics Screening Test.
We are all so proud of them and wanted to celebrate their achievement.
Today has been amazing, children have made their own ‘spectacular spectacles’ and designed and made a fruit kebab.
Choosing which fruit they want to include and learning how to cut safely into chunks the Year 1s have made delicious looking treats. We then tasted these and talked out which fruit was our favourite.
CONGRATULATIONS to you all, you are SPECTACULAR!
Pupil A: I love the spectacles because it is my favourite celebration in phonics!
Pupil B: I have had a great day making fruit kebabs.
Pupil C: Best day ever!
Pupil D: I wrote to Mrs Hackfath to invite her and she came too.
Pupil E: Today has been great, thank you.
The Iron Man
Today in English we came up with concerns and solutions about the Iron Man. In our story we have just read that farmers were furious because he is destroying farms by taking machinery and eating steel. We went to a meeting held by farmer Smith and discussed our concerns and solutions we had come up with in role as farmers.
"I liked chanting save our farms at the end of our meeting"
"It was a really fun lesson"
"Miss Purshouse turned into a farmer"
Errol's Garden
We have been reading about Errol’s garden. We are working in groups to design a rooftop garden.
Library
It was Year 5's turn, this week, to go to the library. We are very fortunate to have such a brilliant facility for learning so close to the school. The children were challenged to recall as much information about the Vikings as they could from their learning this term. They then were looking through books and using online sources to discover new facts about the Vikings. The children were also looking at the portrayals of Vikings in fiction books.
'I didn't know there were computers at the library.' 'I loved being surrounded the books.' 'I enjoyed reading a couple of pages from a Viking fiction book, the characters sounded really interesting.'
Barley Class Reading Breakfast 📖 🥞
Barley Class pupils had a wonderful morning inviting their parents/carers and family members to join them in reading in school on Tuesday. A lovely atmosphere by all and a wonderful opportunity to see the pupils read together with their family members!!
“Lovely idea and nice to spend time reading with O and chatting with the other children and teachers, lovely half an hour! “
“Lovely relaxed class. A lovely morning, thank you!”
“It’s lovely to be able to come in to the classroom and spend time with our daughter. It’s a lovely way to meet the teachers and have a catch up. The kids love the breakfast! Thank you!”
Loving Laceby Library
The Year 2 children thoroughly enjoyed their visit to the library today.
W- Mrs. Wink showed us some different kinds of books.
E- Mrs. Wink had a very old book that was seventy years old. It was a special book she liked to read when she was a little girl.
P- It was lots of fun to look at all the different books.
C- I was looking for scary story books!
The children also spent some time researching information about gardening, growing, plants and trees by reading lots of non-fiction books. They did this in preparation for their new Science topic next term.
Mrs. Brady would like to thank Mrs. Wink and Mrs. Harrison for making everyone feel so welcome.
World Book Day
Daisy Class
To celebrate World Book Day this year we have been looking at the wonderful picture book ‘The Night Dragon’ by Naomi Howarth.
This is a great book with super illustrations, which we used as a stimulus for our dragon mural. We worked together to create the dragon from the story and we’re really pleased with it. We have written book reviews recommending the books to the other Year 1 and 2 classes. Lots of us dressed up in costumes and brought the book that our character was from. We also enjoyed reading our books to our friends. What a great day!!
Poppy Class
Poppy class had a wonderful time celebrating World Book Day.
It was lovely to see all the different book character costumes.
They enjoyed sharing books, writing book reviews and creating special art work linked to their new story book called ‘The cat who wanted to go home’ by Jill Tomlinson.
Sunflower Class
The Sunflowers loved dressing up as their favourite story book characters.
They enjoyed sharing books and reading a new book called ‘Star in the Jar’ by Sam Hay.
They wrote book reviews and created art work of treasure that they would like to find and keep in a jar.
J- Mrs. Brady organised a treasure hunt outside. It was fun to find things to put in a jar.
M- I liked being David Attenborough because I got to investigate things outside. I found a fragment of pottery which might have come from a hidden temple under the playground.
M- We realised that some things might be treasure to some people or just old rubbish to other people.
R- I found all sorts of treasure like coins, jewellery and shiny beads.
C- The treasure in my jar would be money and gold jewellery that might have belonged to a rich princess.
Pumpkin Class
We have had a wonderful day in Pumpkin class today, dressed as book character, we have been finding all about 'Out to Sea' by Helen Kellock. We wrote a book review, a letter to Helen explaining our opinions on her book and drew an alternative front cover for her book.
"The book was really emotional"
"I loved the ending of the story"
"I didn't like when the young girl was grieving"
"I've had a brilliant day! Drawing a different book cover was my favourite!"
Willow Class
Year 4 have enjoyed the magic of books lots recently. We took a trip to the library, where Mrs Wink provided us with lots of wonderful books about the rainforest. A few days later, we were celebrating World Book Day with the rest of the school. Our focus was picture books this year. The children had some amazing discussions about the imagery we looked at in our book, then wrote a letter to the illustrator and produced some of their own art.
Barley Class 📖
To celebrate World Book Day this year we have been looking at the wonderful picture book ‘FArTHER’ by Grahame Baker- Smith.
This is a great book with super illustrations, which we used as a stimulus to create a flying device. Pupils wrote letters in character and researched different flying devices. They then designed their own flying machine inspired from this fabulous book. Many of us dressed up in costumes and brought the book that our character was from. We also enjoyed reading for pleasure with the Year 1 pupils. What a great day!!
Reading Collaboration
On World Book Day Barley Class and Daisy Class got together to share our favourite books.
Year 6s were amazing as they enjoyed reading to the younger children and answering their questions about the Non-fiction books they shared also.
Year 1 and 2 children also showed the Year 6s how great they were at reading and impressed everyone.
Most of all the children all enjoyed reading together, sharing books and chatting about them.
WE LOVE TO READ!!
Buttercup visit to Stanford Library
Buttercup class enjoyed their trip to Stanford Library. We loved looking at the books and all chose one to take back to class. Mrs Wink spoke to us about what happens in a library. She also shared the sorts of stories she enjoyed when she was little. We compared her old books with the shiny, colourful books we chose today. We can’t wait to share our new stories back in class.
Pumpkin Class Reading Breakfast
Today Pumpkin class invited parents into their class to do some reading. We also had breakfast whilst we did our reading. This meant that we all got one more read in our reading dairies this week, just 2 more to go!
"I liked eating food whilst reading most"
"I got to read outside with my mum and my friend"
"It was great!"
"A lovely class of happy children"
"Great turn out and well-behaved class"
"Thank you for having us, we had a lovely time"
Buttercup Learning Share
Buttercup Class were so excited to share their learning with their families.
Here are some of the things we shared:
How we do dough disco to strengthen our hands for writing.
Phonics sounds, Sounding out and Word building
Sharing the Traditional Tales we have been learning including showing our talk for writing story maps
We use our RWI sayings to help us remember letter formation
We practise development of our fine motor skills in so many ways – here we are weaving letters and screwing and unscrewing nuts and bolts
We have been learning about the body including naming the parts and keeping our bodies healthy including our teeth
We shared the Superveg stories we made using SEASAW
Wednesday Readers
Pumpkin class have a reading group on a Wednesday lunch time. Here we have an opportunity to get one of our three reads, especially if we haven't had chance at home. We can also read to a grown up, and talk about the books we are reading. All children in the class are offered this opportunity weekly if they would like to join us.
"I like being able to read my story to Miss Purshouse"
"I don't always have chance to read at home because I go to lots of clubs"
"I think coming to the club is making me a better reader"
Pumpkin class visit the library
Pumpkin class visited the library this week to help us with a research task in geography. Mrs Wink very kindly pointed us in the right direction to non-fiction books about coastlines and Cleethorpes. Once we got back to school, we found different pieces of information using our books. Thank you Mrs Wink for letting us visit and helping us to find interesting books on our topic.
"I would like to go to the library again!"
"I like that we got to borrow books"
"I liked working in groups to find information from the books we go"
Pumpkin Hook Day!
We had a fantastic hook day in Year 3. We went in our nature area and role played for our English. We asked ourselves what would it have felt like to be in a cave? What senses would we have used? What would we have done? We then used what we role played to write a piece of descriptive writing using exciting vocabulary and expanded noun phrases.
Debate writing and discussion
As part of their writing in English, Barley class are looking at debates and balanced arguments. This week pupils had a verbal debate in small groups on whether Odysseus should have told his crew the dangers or not… the pupils discussed the different views and then came together to discuss this in a formal debate. Well done Barley, great discussions had!
Santa’s Storytime
The Year 2 children had a wonderful surprise when Santa arrived in their classroom to read his favourite festive stories to them!
L- I thought it was very nice of him to come all the way from the North Pole to come and see us.
P- I liked listening to his stories.
P- It was really nice to talk to Santa. He asked me if I had been good and I told him I had.
W- I really want Santa to come back and see us next week!
C- I would like to read my story book to Santa next time.
We Love Phonics
One group of children wanted to share with you their super progress in reading. In our small phonics groups, we have learnt all the Set 2 sounds and can blend them for reading and segment them for writing. We are reading a book about horses and learning new vocabulary as we read. We are all so proud of our achievements this half term and can’t wait to get started on Set 3 sounds next week!
Welcome
Today Daisy class welcomed their parents/carers into their new classroom for a tour. It was great that so many people came and enjoyed looking at the children’s new learning space. Refreshments were served by the pupils and their class song made everyone laugh! To remember the event, children made bookmarks showing their author of the term and themselves enjoying the new reading areas. Children shared their favourite classroom spaces:
Pupil 1: “I love using money in the Christmas Shop best.”
Pupil 2: “The craft area is good because I love to make things.”
Pupil 3: “I like reading books in the new book corner because I love books!”
Pupil 4: “The tent is a quiet place to share a story with a buddie.”
Pupil 5: “Let me show you the new toilets ‘cause they’re purple!”
Daisy Reading Buddies
This week in Daisy class the Year 1 and Year 2 children have been reading with buddies. We have made the most of our time to make new friends and buddies to support each other in our new learning space.
Child 1: I love my buddy reading to me.
Child 2: It’s good to share a story together.
Child 3: We have a great new classroom.
Child 4: I like reading with other people.
Presentations
This week in English pumpkin class have been discussing what they would like to change about the school environment. Linking to our class text 'Belonging.' Children used technology to research their ideas and then created a presentation. Today pumpkin class presented their presentations to Willow class. Pumpkin class did amazing to deliver their presentations to others. A big well done to everyone!
Shackleton's expedition to Antarctica
Over this half term, we have really enjoyed learning all about Shackleton and his expedition to Antarctica!
This week, we studied imagery and how a picture of the Weddel Sea made us feel, considering how we would feel if we had been part of the crew. We created a word bank of excellent vocabulary and used this to create short poems- we wrote these on different strips so we could move them around to create the best effect.
We love to read!! 📚
Barley and Pumpkin class came together to share their love of reading! Pumpkin class shared their favourite book with year 6 pupils whilst enjoying the sunshine!
"I loved reading with a year 6"
"The year 6 explained to me about speech marks in my story"
"I read my favourite story outside and it was very calming"
"I had a lovely time reading"
"Me and my partner took it in turns to read"
"I liked my partners book more than my own"
"I liked the author of my partners book and have looked for another book by that author"
A Super Reading Breakfast
The Year 2 children enjoyed sharing books and delicious food with their family, friends and community members. It was great to see everyone enjoying reading together!
P- My mum got to read with me and she had a smile through the whole entire thing!
C- I really enjoyed eating the fruit and talking to my friends about books.
F- My mum and dad both came. We all read together!
C- It was the best day ever! W- I loved reading to my mum.
R- It was a lovely morning. I enjoyed reading two books and loved eating my breakfast!
O- I liked reading with Grandma and eating lots of yummy food!
R- I really enjoyed my mummy coming into my school to read with me.
Parents and Carers Feedback:
*It was great for parents to get involved.
*A lovely morning, thank you. Lovely food, welcoming atmosphere, so nice to see all the children back to school and happy.
*Thank you very much. I have enjoyed my morning reading books to my little boy and meeting his new teachers.
*Absolutely lovely event! Excellent range of books and refreshments.
*It was a nice experience to sit down with my child in his school environment.
*We thoroughly enjoyed today’s reading breakfast. It’s lovely to see other pupils and parents, along with hearing our own children read.
Class debate!
Today in English we thought about what happens to Rhodopis the main character of our book. We argued whether different things that happen to her are a positive or a negative. For example, she becomes a Queen. Which some children said would be a positive, but others said a negative. We then made a list and split them positives and negatives whilst debating which side they should go on.
