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.
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The children have been drawing a story board for a story called Star in the Jar by Sam Hay, using appropriate story language and sequencing events in the correct order. We talked about the characters in the story and used our phonic knowledge to write some words to match each picture. Then we discussed how to make a poster to help us find Sam the Star who is missing from our classroom.
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We made a very special potion to help us to catch the witch from our story. We worked together to write our ingredients list using our Monster Phonics sounds.
This week our story of the week was Stick Man. The children enjoyed a range of creative activities inspired by the story. They made their own special sticks by carefully wrapping colourful wool around them, and they also created bird feeders using Cheerios and pipe cleaners to help look after the birds in our garden. We painted wonderful Stick Man pictures and spent time talking about Stick Man’s family, leading to lovely conversations about the people who make up our own families. It has been a week full of creativity, imagination, and meaningful discussions.
The children have had great fun immersing themselves in a story called Star in the Jar by Sam Hay. We have enjoyed looking at the images in the book, listening to the story, learning to retell the story through songs, write sentences and dress up as astronauts in our space station zooming to the stars.
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The children have been having a wonderful time in the garden. They explored the music area, using sticks, pots, and pans to create beautiful chimes and rhythms. In the pipe and ball area, they experimented with making exciting patterns and pathways, and in the construction zone they used the play tools to build some fantastic creations. It’s been a week full of imagination, exploration, and hands-on learning!
Nursery have been enjoying the story ‘Aliens Love Underpants’ by Claire Freedman and Ben Cort. The children practised their fine motor skills by hanging underpants on the washing line, carefully opening the pegs and counting how many they had hung.
The next morning, the children arrived to a surprise our underpants had disappeared! The Aliens had sneaked in, taken them from the line, and hidden them around the classroom, leaving behind a trail of clues.
Together, we followed the clues to discover where the cheeky Aliens had hidden our underpants. It was a fantastic adventure full of curiosity, problem-solving, and excitement!
SPAG
In Year 3, we worked together to improve our SPaG skills by correcting a short paragraph. First, we read the text carefully and looked for spelling mistakes, missing capital letters, and punctuation errors. Then we discussed our ideas with a partner and explained why certain changes were needed.
In English, Class 3 took part in a practical activity to help deepen their character descriptions based on the book Fox. The children used drama and discussion to explore the characters’ emotions and motivations. 🦊📚✨
Characteristics of good and bad characters within stories and new vocabulary from Rapunzel.
Damo, a parent of one of the children in KS2 joined us to read two books about very special dogs. We enjoyed listening to Detective Dog and Hospital Dog by one of our favourite authors, Julia Donaldson. We enjoyed listening and talking about the stories together and we can’t wait to see who our next special guest will be. If you would like to sign up too be a mystery guest reader, please send us an email.
In Literacy this week, we explored our new book ‘Star in the jar’ by Sam Hay and Sarah Massini. The children enjoyed exploring the different props from our story and listening to the story.
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We read the book ‘Angry Cookie’ and discussed the different emotions Cookie felt throughout the story. In provision, we enjoyed reading the story to our friends, making our own cookies from play dough and drawing different emotion on our own cookies. Some children took the opportunity to write their favourite sentences from the text in their mark making books. Well done Reception!
In English this half term, we’re looking at Fox by Margaret Wild. A powerful story about friendship, trust, and betrayal. We’re exploring how the characters Dog, Magpie and Fox show their feelings through words and pictures. 🦊🐕🦅
📚 Today our class started exploring Ottoline and the Yellow Cat by Chris Riddell! We made predictions about the story, discussed who the characters might be, and shared our first impressions. Exciting mysteries ahead! 🕵️♀️🐱
In class 6 today we are looking at items from our new English book and making predictions. We have had some fantastic discussions and ideas about the items we’ve seen and now we’re writing our thoughts down. Will our predictions be correct?
This week, our Nursery children enjoyed reading Pumpkin Soup by Helen Cooper. They had great fun pretending to make their own soup in the tuff tray before helping to wash, chop, and smell a variety of real vegetables. Together, the children created a set of instructions for how to make pumpkin soup, using lots of fantastic language to describe what they were doing. The teachers then cooked and blended the soup, and everyone enjoyed tasting their delicious homemade pumpkin soup for snack time. It was a wonderful sensory and storytelling experience that brought the book to life!
Class 7 voted for their story today. A tally chat was used to add the scores up to find out which story was the favourite.
We were treated to a master class in poetry by the Liverpool born poet Levi Tafari. He shared some of his poetry and inspired us to write our own poems about DIVERSITY, something which we’re very proud of here at Pleasant Street.
We were very lucky to be visited by Levi Tafari and Jenny from LLP today. Our KS2 children enjoyed a fantastic assembly listening to a live poetry performance by Levi and discussions about diversity, inclusion and equality. Y6 then enjoyed a poetry workshop.
The children were treated to a special visit from Liverpool poet Levi Tafari this morning! He spoke about diversity, culture and history before performing some of his poetry.
Reception are reading The Something by Rebecca Cobb they have enjoyed taking part in a number of activities linked to the text.
Class 7 completed a whole class write to create a poster. Some children then drew images of the doll.
Today we looked at all the different parts of an example text such as the title,paragraphs, introduction and setting.
We used some magic pens to write our names this week. Once we had made our mark on paper, we placed it in the microwave and watched our letters puff up!
Class 6 today looked at some items in our English lesson today. We had some great class discussions about what we thought the items were and who they may belong to. We’re excited to find out what our story will be…
Class 5 used their survival ideas to draw what their shelters would look like.
Reception have been such fantastic writers! In our literacy lessons, we’ve been reading Little Red by Bethan Woollvin, and the children have absolutely loved it. Over the past week, they have been busy creating wanted posters for the wolf – and they did an amazing job with their writing
A number of children from Year 4 and Year 6, were invited by John Moores University to present at the UK Literacy Conference last week. They spoke about Diversity across the curriculum and how they feel represented in reading. We are very proud of the way they spoke with confidence to delegates about the books they chose to share. They also confidently answered questions on reading and how it impacts them. A big thank you to John Moores for the opportunity and to Jo Tregenza, the President Elect of UKLA, who very kindly treated the children to their choice of text from the bookshop.
Today we had Hogarth in the hot seat answering questions about the Iron man and how he feels. Uploaded videos on Seesaw .
In SPAG this morning, Year 4 were practicing creating different sorts of sentences and thinking about what they all must include. For example, an exclamation must end in an exclamation point and a command always has an infinitive verb.
Some pupils from Y4 and Y5 were very lucky to take part in a fantastic reading and author event at John Moores University, organised with Liverpool Learning Partnership. The children took part in a range of magical themed activities and tricks, worked with other schools to perform Reader’s Theatre and then had the opportunity to listen to and meet Frank Cottrell Boyce.
The theme of the event was magic as the event was celebrating Cottrell-Boyce’s text – The Wonder Brothers. The children were so grateful to receive a copy of the text to take home and they can’t wait to read the story as the extracts shared today had them hooked!
Reception have been learning this week all about our Literacy story ‘Little Red’ by Bethan Woolvin. The children explored what was inside Little Reds basket, listened to the story fantastically, explored the characters from the story and drew some of the characters.
We also discovered that there were more clues waiting for us inside of the golden envelopes. We read the texts we found inside to each other and worked as a class to decide what they all related to. Each of them was linked to a traditional fairytale such as Cinderella, The Three Little Pigs, Sleeping Beauty and Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
This morning in English we have been looking at some objects which relate to our new book, wondering what they might tell us about the setting and plot of the story. What clues do twigs and leaves, a hat and scarf and golden envelopes with a golden pen give us?
Our story this week is Pip and Posy – The New Friend. Today our special word was “collect” so the children went into the garden with a checklist to collect particular items and put them inside their bag.
The children have been reading a story called “Pip and Posy – The New Friend”. The story is set at the beach so we explored what types of things we might see at the beach. The children used a magnifying class to look closely.
This week, our mud kitchen was a hive of activity as the children made pancakes, ice-creams and magic potions in the sunshine. We also overheard some of our special words from Maths and NELI this week where the children discussed heavy and light.
Using our example text ‘Mission Log’ the class began looking at the features used in this model text. The children worked hard to find examples of features such as relative clauses, modal verbs and verb prefixes.
In english we looked at a letter from Hermelin to Mrs Mattison. We have been looking for adjectives, imperative verbs and exclamation marks.
Our families joined us to play, we explored the nursery and the children were able to show their families what new things they have learnt and currently learning about.
In English we read the story ‘The Detective Mouse’. We found the adjectives, nouns, ‘and’ and un sounds.
The Last Wolf by Mini Grey
After finding posters about a wolf in last weeks English lesson. Class 7 hunted inside and outside of school also looking up and down Pleasant Street and Clarence Street for signs of a wolf. The children used their sight, smelling and listening skills to find clues about the wolf. They even asked several staff in school if they had seen the wolf.
Reception had a lovely trip on their first day back after half term. We visited Farmer Teds farm as the class were learning all about farm animals, their mums and their babies and it linked with our literacy story ‘Mr Gumpy’s Outing’, when he collected lots of different farm animals along on his boat ride. The children were so excited to use their knowledge of animals and be able to link them with real life experiences.
Whilst at the farm the children enjoyed some fantastic activities including ferret racing, the Shaun the sheep show and exploring lots of minibeast.
Then of course the children had to have a go of the climb and slide.
Then after lunch Reception were able to explore more of the farm animals in their barns.
And finally have a go on the climbing frame and in the sand area. What a wonderful day.
We have been using visuals and objects to explore our new story and thinking about what clues they might give us about the setting and plot of the story.
Nursery have been reading ‘Cinderella’ this week. The children have enjoyed making a carriage, writing invitations to the ball and creating magic wands 🪄✨.
This term in English Reception has been reading the story Mr Gumpy’s Outing and the children have created some fantastic lists of things they will need for their teddy bears picnic.
Today the children enjoyed a wonderful picnic in the garden.
A big thank you to one of our Nursery and Y1 parents, who surprised the children this afternoon as our Mystery Guest Reader. He read two wonderful books, singing songs and putting on different voices for the characters.
Thank you for your time, the children loved it!
We practiced verb prefixes during sentence accuracy time! Some great sentences⭐️
For world book day this year Reception read the story ‘A Seeds Grows’ which is a non-fiction story about how seeds grow from a seed and germinate to push through the soil to grow into a wonderful flower. The children created a poster about a lifecycle of a flower and what flowers need to grow. the children also created some fantastic flower pictures and some paper flower crafts.
Year 4 joined an online assembly with the brilliant Michael Rosen. We really enjoyed his stories and poems.
Today in English we read the story ‘The land of the Wild Things.’ We worked in partners and found adjectives, nouns, capital letters and full stops and exclamation marks in the story.
Reception had a fantastic time at the museum aquarium, as they explored all the animals that live under the sea. This links with our literacy story the storm whale.
We looked at some artefacts and vocabulary related to our new book so that we could make predictions about the story.
Today in Class 6 we were using the Hook to make our predictions on a variety of pictures from a story. They were asked to work as a class making predictions together and then make their own predictions in their books.
Class two had the pleasure of reading “Home For Grace” written by Kathryn White. We learnt it was about a woman who appears with a sleeping bag, living in a shop doorway, Jess is full of questions. Where is her home? Why did she leave? And what will happen when the snow comes?
Class two enjoyed being part of the zoom with the author and discussing the underlying themes of kindness, understanding and empathy.
A number of our reading buddies visited JMU this week to share their experience and wisdom with some of their Education students who are planning to write their own books. The buddies shared information on what they look for in a text and how they engage and support their partners in sessions. They also demonstrated how they read out loud to others and answered questions to help with the students’ research.
Our reading buddies are happy to be back together and it has been great to see them enjoying texts together around school.
The class have been learning about abstract nouns and have made some great sentences!
Today Class 6 examined various objects during our English lesson and made predictions on what the objects where, who used them, why they used them and where.
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.
