At Pleasant Street Primary School, we believe that literacy and communication are key life skills. Through the English curriculum, we will help children develop the skills and knowledge that will enable them to communicate effectively and creatively through spoken and written language and equip them with the skills to become lifelong learners. We want children to enjoy and appreciate literature and its rich variety. We have included information on reading and phonics in a separate section.
English Long Term Plan
We use the Read to Write teaching resources by Literacy Counts as the basis of our English planning from Reception to Year Six. It incorporates reading, writing, vocabulary and GPS skills through the teaching of high quality text each half term.
Class 2 looked at a set of instructions on how to build a beautiful home for a Bog Baby. First we read our instructions and checked we had all of our equipment, we then followed our instructions carefully to create a beautiful home. We then generated verbs and adverbs to describe the actions.
This term Reception have been learning all about the story ‘Star in the Jar’ in English, Reception has explored space, light and dark in science. On Friday some of the Reception class explored the Planetarium at the Museum, the children watched an informative video about ‘the Little Star that Could’ which explained all about our solar system and all the different planets in our universe.
To help to prepare us for our writing, we worked together to retell the story with actions.
This term Reception have been focusing on the story Juniper Jupiter by Lizzy Stewart, the children have loved learning about Juniper Jupiter and her sidekick Peanut! The children received a letter from Juniper Jupiter asking if the children could create a poster as to become her sidekick whilst Peanut is unwell. The children created some fantastic drawings of themselves being superheroes and explained what their superpowers would be.
To help us prepare for our writing, we produced and rehearsed a story map. We are going to use the images to help us with our writing.
This week some of the children worked in our new building to show off their fantastic SPAG skills. We have been focussing on using words like and, because or so to add more detail.
Our reading buddies have enjoyed reading together again this year. Some pupils enjoyed sharing some brand new non-fiction books together, finding out lots of information about plants and flowers.
Today our comprehension work was based on a text about the Romans in Britain.
This morning in English we are planning Rose Blanche’s diary in our own words. We have studied the story and now we’re using our comprehension skills to create our plan, using keywords and illustrations from various events.
In English Reception have been reading and exploring the story ‘Juniper Jupiter’. Reception have drew pictures of what happened within the story on to a storyboard. Reception worked so hard to remember what parts of the story and what to draw.
This week we have been reading Oliver’s Vegetables, we discussed what vegetables we already know and some new. To find out wether the children liked or disliked the vegetables we did a taste test.
We worked on parenthesis in English today and had some great discussions, giving examples. We then extended our comprehension skills by retrieving information from a written text.
This term Reception are learning about the story ‘Juniper Jupiter’ in English. The children have explored lots of superheroes and we have been very crafty this week, creating our very own superhero lolly sticks and superhero masks.
In class 6 this morning we are looking at the hook items from our English story and making predictions on who the girl may be in the picture and where she may be going…
Class 3 enjoyed a trip to The Florrie on Friday to take part in poetry activities and to listen to Michael Rosen talk and recite some poetry. We took part in a workshop to create our own animal poems, played poetry games and listened to a man called George reading his favourite poems. We had a brilliant time and loved hearing some of our favourite poems including Chocolate Cake and No Breathing in Class!
Today in class 2 we did conscience alley trying to persuade Jack to either go up the Beanstalk or not!
The children worked in groups to generate questions to ask our special visitor. They explored different question words and what they are used to find out, including How, Why, Where, Who and What? They were delighted to receive a visit from not one, but two Lonely Beasts! They asked questions and listened carefully to the answers.
In English, the children worked very hard to independently read words and using a ruler they connected the word to the correct image.
In English this term we are exploring the book “Little Red”. In our choose time the children have loved to dress up as all the characters in the story.
This week the children have been working so hard to write all about the story. Today for our sentence snake we wrote “Red went into the woods” the children worked independently to write their sentence, they did a fantastic job.
We used the clues that had arrived in our classroom to write predictions about our new English story.
Here are a couple of examples of our writing contributions this half term, based on ‘The King who banned the Dark’
Recently Reception have been learning all about constant and vowels using them to spell words in phonics, they have been using phonic knowledge to write different CCVC and CVCC words.
Reception have also been finishing Miss Oh No’s zigzag books for her as she keeps forgetting to draw the pictures so Reception have been reading the sentences and drawing pictures to match the sentence to help Miss Oh No finish her books.
It was fantastic to observe the children leading their own game of ‘Heads Up’ during choosing time this week. They have worked so hard learning different ways of questionning during whole class speech games. It was lovely to see that they can now play this game independently.
Class 4 used the Writer’s Knowledge wheel to generate accurate sentences that could be used in our own invention stories.
We used a crucial moment in our story to consider the character’s feelings. Through role play, we were able to come up with descriptive phrases to describe the character’s reaction as opposed to stating “I felt …”
We are looking forward to using these in tomorrows incidental write. Well done everyone!
Wonderful examples of work on our washing line, as the children immersed themselves in our new Literacy Counts unit.
In English today we did some drama to understand how the characters of our story will feel when they see the gargantuan beast.
Reception have been learning all about plant lifecycles in Science, we planted our own sunflower seeds by following ‘Joe’s’ instructions from our Literacy story ‘The Extraordinary Gardener’, we are so excited to watch our seeds grow.
We recapped on what we could see on Offley Street and looked at the notice board. Class 7 made wonderful predictions.
Offley Street. Who lives here? Is it a nice place to live? What can you hear on the video?
Class 7 found an old suitcase in our class! What was it for? What are the items in it for?
The children did brilliantly today, giving reasons for and against banning the dark!
Thank you to all of the Y1 parents who joined us for the Phonics Screening Information meeting. If you have any questions about the test, please do not hesitate to ask us.
Building our dual narrative for The Witch and Hansel or Gretal in our English book based on the fairytale of Hansel and Gretal. Using new vocabulary and extended noun phrases to bring our writing to life.
We used the story of Hansel and Gretal to help find examples of expanded noun phrases, verbs and adverbs to enhance meaning and profiles of each character.
The children wore some wonderful costumes and outfits today, as they celebrated World Book Day in style. There were superheroes in class, along with wizards and princesses! The children were also excited to take home their free book.
Class three have enjoyed world book day! It has been so fun and interesting seeing and hearing about each others costumes and favourite books?
Today in English we are looking at the hook items for our next English story and making predictions. We also discussed our first impressions as a class and heard lots of great thoughts.
Reception enjoyed their school trip to the museum this morning as we investigated the aquarium, we loved looking at all the different sea creatures. Our trip links to our Literacy story ‘The Storm Whale’ and our topic of under the sea that we have learnt about this term.
Today class 6 are researching information to build their biography of Earnest Henry Shackleton.
In English today we are converting sentences to passive voice and using new vocabulary we have learnt, thesaurus’s and dictionary’s to find synonyms from a modelled text.
The class enjoyed listening to author Lucy Farfort this morning, after enjoying her book ‘In our Hands’ – a book about hope, unity and positivity! They also drew characters who would transform the world! The book links in well with the upcoming Mental Health and Wellbeing Week.
Mental Health and Well-being Week
Today we have been very lucky to listen to Natalie Denny, Natalie went into amazing detail of her characters and what goes into writing a published book. We then had the pleasure of listening to the first chapter of Natalie Denny’s new book, Keisha Jones is a Force of Nature!
This book is about when Keisha discovers that the trees in a nearby park are going to be cut down to make way for a carpark, the Bee Squad has its next cause. It’s time for some green activism to save the VITs … that’s Very Important Trees!
Some of our reading buddies were invited to John Moores University library to talk about reading and books with some Childhood Studies University students. They discussed some of the books in the library, why they selected them and their thoughts on the content and illustrations.
This week in English, class 6 showed off their skills in figurative language to build an atmospheric poem. We have also showed how we can use semi-colons to extend our sentences.
Today in English we used AI as part of our hook to create the right atmosphere. We explored different items and had a class discussion on what we thought the items were used for. We then wrote our first impressions down.
In class 5 we found a strange bag in the class cupboard. We found lots of different items inside the bag. Maybe this is a clue for our new English book? We made predictions on what we think the book might be about.
The class were introduced to objects relating to their new English book today. They had some wonderful ideas, predictions and questions!!
We enjoyed looking at our hook reveal and making some amazing predictions on what our story could be about. What could all these items mean?
This term class 4 have the pleasure in reading “The Journey” by Francesca Sanna. This book explores the unimaginable decisions made as a family leave their home and everything they know to escape the turmoil and tragedy brought by war.
A big thank you to our reading buddies who have all completed their training and are now reading with their buddies each week, enjoying stories together and helping to foster a love of reading!
Reception have been trying really hard this week to write sentences in phonics using capital letters, finger spaces and full stops.
