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.
The children have had a lovely time learning about a story called ‘Superworm’ by Julia Donaldson this half term. Taking part in physical activities based upon parts of the story and joining in with the repeated phrases in the book. Today the children were very excited to write about the story using their phonic knowledge and letter formation to write captions and simple sentences about Superworm.
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In Nursery we are reading the story ‘Pumpkin Soup’ by Helen Cooper, in the story in the animals work together to make some yummy pumpkin soup. Nursery had a go at making our very own soup, the children used the knives to chop the vegetables into small pieces, we explored what the vegetables were called and what they smelled like. Then we added the ingredients to the soup maker and waited until it was snack time enjoy their yummy soup.
The Nursery children then had a go at making our own recipes for soup by cutting and sticking the images of the vegetables and instructions of what we did.
Roger the poet visited Class One again this morning so that we could share more of our nature poetry with him. He was very impressed as we recited our class poem aloud to him and afterwards, he declared us all poets!
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The children have enjoyed listening to the a traditional tale called The Gingerbread Man joining in with repeated phrases and using coloured icing and chocolate buttons to decorate their own Gingerbread biscuit.
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This week in our story times we have been reading ‘Pumpkin Soup’ by Helen Cooper, in our Nursery we have been having a go in our investigation area of making our very pumpkin soup recipes using our mark making skills and using our imagination to be chefs mixing the colourful rice to make pumpkin soup.
We were delighted to welcome parents this week to learn about how we teach phonics in school. Miss Stocks showed explained the Monster Phonics programme we use and answered some really great parent questions about how to support the children at home.
🌳✨ Year 3 have been getting creative with poetry! ✨🌳
We were lucky to welcome a poet into our classroom to help us create our very own poems. We explored imaginative vocabulary linked to a magical forest, thinking about mythical creatures, sounds, sights and the atmosphere of an enchanted woodland. 🧚♀️🦄🐉
The children then used their ideas to create a fantastic magical forest poem. 📖✍️✨
We had a special visitor to Class 6 today called Roger. Roger is a local poet and he read us some of his fun poems before giving us tips on how he writes them. We talked about our amazing playground areas in school and compiled a rhyme to talk about the things we have and how we look after our school. We’re looking forward to seeing Roger in school again in the next few weeks.
We were very lucky this morning as a poet visited our class! Roger is so impressed by our school that he wants to create a poem all about it and he needed our help. With Roger, we thought about the trees we have in our playground and what we might find there, such as birds. Then we worked as a team to write the first draft of our poem, using our imaginations to bring rainbow red parrots and cotton candy clouds to life. We all became poets! ☁️🦜🎶
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Using sentence pictures, Class One were able to retell our story to their partners and classmates which will help them choose the sentences they will use in their writing. For example, next, they jumped on the bed.
For world poetry day today, the children in Nursery listened to a lovely poem read by the author of we’re going on a bear hunt, Michael Rosen. The children sat and listened carefully to the poem.
Our English lesson today was a bit different as we were joined by the poet, Michael Rosen via a special Zoom video. He read us one of his poems about our Earth and the different ways in which we can look after it by being eco friendly. We also thought about the word ‘wonder’ and all of the things different children across the country associate with it.
We attended a live assembly with Michael Rosen for National Poetry Day, all about wonder. The assembly introduced the Hot Poets WONDER takeover and the incredible collection of free poems, films and classroom resources available to teachers, while giving pupils plenty of inspiration, ideas and word wizardry to launch their own National Poetry Day adventures.
In English, we have been using pictures from our book, Old Bear, to help us to plan the sentences that we are writing to retell the story. This helps us as we order the events, with remembering the characters involved and in choosing the key vocabulary we will include such as ‘plan’, ‘build’, ‘tower’ and ‘crash’.
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This week the Nursery children have been very creative making lovely owl paper plates for our story, ‘Owl Babies’. The children decorated and stuck shapes to the paper plates to make their very own owls.
Freeze-frame acting brought curiosity to life! The children stepped into the role of “Curiosity” and used their bodies and expressions to show what they could see, think and feel. A fantastic way to develop imagination, expression and communication! 👀💭
This week for Literacy Nursery have been reading the story ‘Owl Babies’, we have discussed who lives in the Owl Family and who lives in our families and what type of house we live in. We then created our family houses using lolly sticks and then drew pictures of our families inside the houses.
Thank you to Siva who came into our school to be our wonderful mystery guest reader last week, the children in Nursery and Reception listened to the story ‘The Highway Rat’ by Julia Donaldson so wonderfully. Thank you so much Siva for your time and wonderful reading.
The children worked in pairs this morning to ‘hot seat’ Curiosity about its journey to Mars.
This week, our class have been learning about speech punctuation. We explored how to use inverted commas and other punctuation marks correctly when writing dialogue. 📚✏️
The children developed their understanding of the model text and new vocabulary today. In pairs, they discussed the questions before agreeing on an answer.
Our class has been exploring the story Curiosity, developing their understanding of metaphors and creating some thoughtful and imaginative examples in preparation for their incidental write.
Before reading our new English text, the children wrote some wonderful noun phrases!
📚🔎 Year 3 have been given some clues about the book we’ll be exploring in English!
Some children were lucky enough to take a closer look at the clues before heading back to their tables to discuss their ideas and make predictions about what the book might be. Lots of thoughtful discussions and exciting guesses! 👀📖
Today’s SPaG lesson focused on prefixes, and the children really impressed us with their knowledge! 🌟 They came up with lots of fantastic examples and enjoyed exploring how adding a prefix can change the meaning of a word.
The children used excellent oracy skills this morning, as they looked at objects related to our new book.
Nursery had the pleasure to have two mystery guest readers this week. First we had our lovely school governor Jean come in and read us the story ‘Five Minutes Peace’ by Jill Murphy. The children loved listening to the story and relating to their own family experiences. Thank you Jean for your lovely reading and time to come into our Nursery.
We also had a special visitor from Class 4 who wanted to come in and read with our lovely Nursery! She read her favourite story ‘The Gruffalo’ by Julia Donaldson, the children listened carefully and enjoyed rereading a classic story! Thank you so much for coming into our class to read!
This week our NELI story is ‘Stardust’ by Jeanne Willis and Briony May Smith. As we look back at some historical figures we linked Vincent Van Gogh and his famous painting of the Starry Night with our NELI Story. The children loved learning all about Van Gogh and his famous paintings. The children then had a go at recreating Van Gogh ‘Starry Night’.
Thank you to Ms Lowry for sharing a book with the children in EYFS called ‘When baby lost bunny’ by Julia Jarman and Adrian Reynolds. A lovely story about a family outing that quickly turns into a fantastic parade of animals with baby leading the way. If you would like to be our next mystery reader please get in touch with us in school or through email.
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The children used some of the key vocabulary from the story The Storm Whale to think about and write their own sentence about the main characters in the story. The children had some interesting ideas and were able to use their phonic knowledge to segment and blend the sounds in the words they were writing.
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This week in Nursery, the children have been enjoying our NELI story, Look and Say What You See in the Countryside. The children explored the different animals, plants, and features found in the countryside, using new vocabulary to describe what they could see. In our directed activity the children had a go at drawing an animal and their homes, some children drew spiders and their webs and others drew deer and the countryside. This week we have also had an exciting delivery that links with our text and mini beast! We now have 5 caterpillars to watch and look after as the children learn all about lifecycles of animals.
The children have been working with an adult to fill in the missing words in a sentence and used their imagination to write stories using The Storm Whale story as a template. We have also been exploring the story props area to write sentences about what we can see remembering to use a full stop, capital letters and finger spaces in our sentences.
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Role Play
🌲📚 Year 3 stepped into the world of Into the Forest by Anthony Browne through role play! The children worked collaboratively to explore different scenarios from the story, including pretending a character was lost, creeping carefully through the forest and imagining someone coming to help. They used fantastic speaking and listening skills, thoughtful questioning and lots of creativity to bring the story to life. 🌳✨
The children used their phonic knowledge to write a model sentence independently during a phonic lesson, then chose to write a postcard to the whale in our story ‘ The Storm Whale’ by Benji Davies to ask the whale some questions such as “ How can whales swim” ? And “ Do you have any babies” ?
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Thank you to Miss Gormley for being our mystery guest reader today, sharing a lovely story with the children in EYFS called The Storm Whale in winter by Benji Davies . If you would like to be our next mystery guest reader please get in touch with us in school or through email.
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A big thank you to Miss Goodwin who joined us today as our mystery guest reader, sharing a book with us called How to make a cherry pie and visit the USA by Marjorie Priceman. A story about a young baker who goes on a trip around America to find all the materials she needs to stock her kitchen. If you would like to be our next mystery guest reader please get in touch.
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Christophe’s Story
📚 We explored the front cover of Christophe’s Story and used the clues in the illustration and title to make predictions about what the story might be about. Lots of thoughtful ideas and great discussion as we practised inference and prediction skills!
As part of our Diversity Day celebration the children talked about the idea of ‘home’ and what this is for different people, we thought about different parts of a house and what makes it feel homely and important for them. The children wrote about their home and used collage materials with a range of boxes to make a model of a home. We also learnt to recite a poem called Home and confidently performed the poem for the rest of the school. Well done everyone!
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Today we introduced our new English Story. We had lots of items around the classroom that explained the story for the children to make all of their predictions.
Exploring movement vocabulary of the animals from our class text Mr. Gumpy’s Outing and a modelled write of an invitation.
Year 3 worked hard in English today, reading texts, finding evidence and sharing their ideas. Great teamwork and discussion! 📚✏️
Into the Forest
📚🌲 This term, Year 3 have immersed themselves in Into the Forest by Anthony Browne. Through reading, discussion and creative writing, the children have explored the story’s themes, developed their descriptive language and produced some fantastic work inspired by the mysterious forest setting. We are incredibly proud of their imagination, effort and enthusiasm! ✨
Today we spent some time outside acting out our stories that we will be writing in English. We acted out a story of finding out war has broke out and we have to pack all of our essentials to leave home and find a safe place.
The children enjoyed this activity as it helped them make some more ideas to help them write their plan before they begin their story writing.
Today we read a letter from our story. This showed us some examples of emotional writing and helped us gain an idea of how we will write our stories. We had some great examples from children using speech and fronted adverbials.
The children read the story ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ in our NELI sessions, through learning special words linked to the story ‘decide, swap, follow and yell’. The children had lots of fun choosing in their self directed choosing time. They had a go at retelling the story using props in the tuff tray, measuring the beanstalks, building castles with foamy ‘clouds’ and junk modelling a fantastic castle.
Class 7 completed a comprehension activity on Mr. Gumpy’s Outing by John Burningham.
Thank you to Mr Verdin for sharing a story with the children as our mystery guest reader. The children enjoyed listening to a rhyming story called The king and the cook by Julia Donaldson and David Roberts . A story about a fussy king who can’t find a good cook until he meets the timid Wobbly Bob, who is afraid of everything, leading the king to help him overcome his fears on a culinary adventure to make his favourite meal.
We can not wait to see who will be our next mystery guest reader. If you would like to sign up to share a story with us please send us an email.
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For our English lessons this week we have been thinking about the characters in the story The Extraordinary Gardener and the story setting. The children learnt to sing a song about the beginning of the story to help them to sequence events and following the teachers model wrote their own sentence about the beginning of the story.
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Thank you to Mrs Davies for sharing a story with the children as our mystery guest reader. The children enjoyed listening to a rhyming story called ‘ My friend bear’ by Jez Alborough about a boy named Eddy who loses his teddy bear in the woods, only to find a giant bear with a tiny teddy.
we can not wait to see who will be our next mystery guest reader. If you would like to sign up to share a story with us please send us an email.
Learning new vocabulary then putting the words into sentences and writing and colouring get well cards for Mr. Gumpy from our class text Mr. Gumpy’s outing.
The children have been learning how to plant and care for flowers and vegetables, this week the children used a model text to write their own instructions to plant a seed. We thought about what equipment we would use and what we would need to do for a seed to grow onto a plant.
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Thank you to Mrs Mira for being our mystery guest reader this half term, sharing a story called Harry the dirty dog by Gene Zion. A classic children’s story about a white dog with black spots who at the beginning of the story hates baths, but as the story continues he changes his mind.
We can not wait to see who will be our next mystery guest reader. If you would like to sign up to share a story with us please send us an email.
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Today we did a comprehension task about a story called “Knight Survival Guide: Are you tough enough?”. This was good to read and learn about something new to build our comprehension. We also answered some questions to show our understanding.
We have been listening to a story called The Extraordinary Gardener by Sam Boughton, today the children looked at the illustrations in the text talking about the colours,flowers and plants in the story. Then we took some art materials into the school allotment area to draw our own pictures of the flowers and plants in our garden. The children were very excited using their sense to explore the area with their friends.
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Reception received a surprise envelope today, containing a letter from Joe and a packet of seeds. The children explored the gardening tools and story props then we read the letter together and thought about what plants may grow from the seeds. The children suggested that we should plant the seeds and give them water and some sunshine to see if they grow into grass, sunflowers or trees. We are looking forward to reading the story, The Extraordinary Gardener and finding out who Joe is and what happens when he planted his seeds.
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Uncovering clues in English today 🔍📚
These mysterious objects are helping us predict our new class text… what could it be? 🤔
The BIg Bad wolf came to school and wanted to eat the pancakes for our Easter breakfast ! So we made a plan to trap the wolf and save our breakfast, the children discussed ideas then we drew a plan and wrote a list of materials that we needed. Finally the children built a trap to catch the wolf in the garden with a toy cake to entice the wolf and catch him in the net.
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Fabulous English work for our class text ‘What the ladybird heard’ by Julia Donaldson
After our trip to the farm the children looked at photographs and talked with their friends about where we went, what animals we saw and the fun of the tractor ride. Then the children used their phonic knowledge to write about the visit independently. The children were very proud of their work and were able to read their sentences to the adults in the room. Well done everyone!
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Today we went outside to do some more work of our poem and pick parts to do in our groups.
Today we have been learning about syllable patterns in poems. We explored the poem ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ and identified the number of syllables in words and lines in the poem.
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Today we read the poem Chocolate Cake and then watched a video of it. They enjoyed comparing how the poem sounded and looked, and talked about which version they liked best.
Today we began learning about Figurative Language which uses creative words to make writing more fun and vivid. It includes similes, metaphors, and personification to help us imagine things better and bring stories to life.
Today the children used watercolour paints and pencils to create images of The Big bad wolf and Little Red. We talked about the characters in the story and discussed the colours and style that the illustrator had used to make the images in the book.
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The children had a lovely story outdoors today as they enjoyed their drinks and a snack, consisting of either an apple, pear or tangerine.
We heard the birds singing and watched the gulls flying overhead.
Year 3 have loved exploring Pip and Egg by Alex Latimer in English this term 📚
The story follows Pip, a bird, and Egg, who is still waiting to hatch. Pip is curious and excited about the world, while Egg is nervous and unsure about coming out of the shell. Throughout the story, Pip encourages Egg and shows kindness and patience as Egg finds the courage to hatch.
This term we have enjoyed creating some fantastic poems and incidental writing inspired by the story. We’re very proud of their creativity and hard work!
What a brilliant World Book Day in Class 3! 📚
The children dressed up as characters from traditional tales and shared some of their favourite stories. So many amazing costumes! 👏✨
We were so impressed with the costumes that the children wore to celebrate World Book Day together. Our teachers had a very hard job, selecting a winner from each class. The children who were selected enjoyed a book buying trip and a delicious hot chocolate.
Class 5 looking great in their costumes today. We read a book called Three Little Vikings, a story about 3 brave little vikings who defeated a Monstrous Troll.
The children in Reception had a fantastic day celebrating World Book Day. We enjoyed dressing up as a story character and exploring the classroom which was filled with exciting fairy tale story activities. We made story bags, built the Three little pigs house, mixed porridge for Goldilocks, looked at story books, had a fairytale tea party in the home corner, went on a fairytale treasure hunt in the garden and made our own story books. Then Little Red came to visit us and answered lots of our questions about the Big bad wolf and Grandma. What an exciting day !
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Today for World Book Day we had a book about Robin Hood but with a twist. We made Robin Hood hats as part of our activity after we read our book. This was lots of fun!
Today was World Book Day and we read a story about Robin Hood. This was fun to learn about a new story and see the difference in the book compared to the original story. We had lots of fun dressing up as our favourite characters. After we read the story, we made Robin Hood hats to take home.
Class 6 were privileged to attend a book signing with the brilliant author Frank Cottrell-Boyce. We were treated to a book reading by Frank and he talked about his childhood and his inspirations before signing copies of his new book for us.
We have been listening to a story called Little Red by Bethan Woollvin, the children thought about the different characters in the story and how to describe them. Then the children wrote about Little Red and the Wolf describing their features and character.
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This week in our NELI story we read Toby and the Tricky things, our special words were ‘pour’, ‘big and small’ ‘tricky’ and ‘by myself’. The children have been really trying to do tricky things this week such as putting on their coats and fastening their zip by themselves. The children in small groups have had a go at pouring different materials into cups, in the garden the children have poured rice into different containers and in the water tray the children have used containers to pour. In our maths this week we looked at big and small in connection with our NELI story, the children had a go at ordering big and small bears, big small and medium size wooden people and ordering people biggest to smallest in class.
The children deciphered symbols from our whole class reading book this morning!
We will be looking at a new story in Reception called Little Red. We wondered what the story would be about and after exploring the story props we made predictions about the characters , setting and story plot. Then we drew images of the story and made puppets of the characters in the book to show to the rest of the class .
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This morning we had a special delivery in our classroom. A suitcase filled with a walking stick, key, newspaper, paint, paint brush and hat appeared. We made some predictions and guessed who these items might belong to.
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Today we introduced our new English Text. We made predictions on what the story might be about and what might happen. This was interesting to see everyone’s different ideas and any links to other stories they made.
The children in Reception have had a wonderful time learning about different cultures and celebrations. We took part in Lion dances, made dragon masks and visited the Chinese arch as part of the Lunar New Year celebrations. To consolidate our experience some children chose to write about our trip to Chinatown demonstrating their phonic knowledge, good pencil control and letter formation.
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Thank you to this weeks mystery guest reader Miss Jackson for visiting us in nursery to share a story called The Baddies by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler. The children enjoyed listening to lovely story about a witch, a troll and a ghost who pride themselves on being mean but are outsmarted by a little girl.
We can not wait to see who are next mystery guest reader will be. If you would like to sign up to be our next mystery reader please send us an email. Thank you
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We have been looking at a story map to help the children retell the story of Juniper Jupiter by Lizzy Stewart, then the children chose to draw their own story map retelling the story in the correct sequence and using phrases from the book.
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Today the children have been discussing the differences and similarities between two stories, Juniper Jupiter by Lizzy Stewart and Star in the jar by Sam Hay. The children had lots of suggestions which we added to our chart then the children drew pictures of the main characters in the stories and wrote sentences about the two books.
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Last week we read the story ‘Don’t wake up Tiger!’ in our NELI sessions, our focus words were ‘float’ ‘hurry’ ‘stroke’ and ‘worry’. Some activities we did this week include floating items in water and seeing which items float or don’t float. We also created some wonderful tiger pictures and wrote some cards for Tigers birthday. Before we were invited to Tigers birthday party where we had an amazing party.
In English, we decided if the noun needed ‘s’ or ‘es’ to make a plural.
We have been researching key facts about Wolves this week and debating whether they should be re-introduced into the wild. We discussed many reasons for and against and had great debates.
In Year 3, we have been learning about rivers and waterfalls, exploring key technical vocabulary linked to their features 🌊 We enjoyed watching a David Attenborough video about our planet and the water that surrounds us. Inspired by this, the children became David Attenborough themselves and created their own descriptive narrations about rivers and waterfalls.
This week for our SPAG lesson we looked at adding the ending ‘es’ and ‘s’ to make plurals.
For our first NELI story Nursery read the story ‘Neon Leon’ which explores being different in the jungle and finding a place where Leon belongs. The children created some beautiful pictures of Neon Leon and we played a matching game to match the toy jungle animals with the real life picture of the jungle animal, the children did an amazing job!
Today in English we wrote sentences about our story. We have done some fantastic whiteboard work!
The class used a text based on The Hound of the Baskervilles to identify adverbs this morning.
Thinking of alternative words to ‘sad’ and learning new key vocabulary from the class text ‘Paper Planes.’
Today we practiced our “dge” sound. We had a go at completing the missing word and read through some sentences with the sound in.
Beginning to read our new class text – Paper Plane by Jim Helmore, recalling the story and recapping of ways the children can keep in touch with each other.
Why is there a den in class 7? Who put the den there? Looks of interesting conversations and ideas. Role play in the den, making paper aeroplanes.
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we are learning about a story called Juniper Jupiter by Lizzy Stewart which features a superhero as a main character. Today we have been pretending to be a superhero thinking of a superhero name and our own super powers !
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We’ve been looking at clues and exploring words and phrases to make predictions for our new English story.
In english we found capital letters, full stops and the word ‘and’. We then looked at words we can add ‘un’ to change the meaning.
In English this term, Year 3 are using River of Rain by Roger McGough to develop descriptive writing skills. Pupils explore rich vocabulary, imagery and poetic language as they follow a raindrop’s journey from cloud to river to sea, inspiring vivid descriptions of settings and movement. 🌧️✍️📚
In English we asked Hermelin questions. Some of the questions were “are you a strong mouse?” “Can you find my headphones?” “Why do you like cheese?” “How old are you?”.
In English we made predictions about the story Hermelin. We talked about what we think is going to happen in the story.
For our last few weeks of school the children have been listening to the story ‘The Jolly Christmas Postman’ by Allan Ahlberg and Janet Ahlberg. The children have loved writing postcards and Christmas Cards and letters.
The children have also enjoyed joining to do some fantastic Christmas activities in our stay and play session and at our party day.
The children made posters to help us find Sam the Star who is missing from our classroom, then we went for a walk around our school to ask if anyone has seen Sam putting up our posters to ask people to help us find Sam.
I hope we find him soon !
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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.
Today we worked in pairs to learn how to round our numbers to the nearest 10.
Class 7 completed a whole class write to create a poster. Some children then drew images of the doll.
Today we looked at our vocabulary for English and made our own sentences with it. This helped us to know what is good vocabulary to use in our books.
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.
