English

UKLA International Conference

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.

Question time!!!

Today we had Hogarth in the hot seat answering questions about the Iron man and how he feels. Uploaded videos on Seesaw .

Structuring different sentence types

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.

Reading Event at JMU – Frank Cottrell Boyce

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!

Little Red

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.

What is inside the golden envelopes?

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.

English text hook objects

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?

NELI Nursery 📕

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.

NELI Story 📚

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.

Fun in the Mud Kitchen

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.

Writer knowledge

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.

English

In english we looked at a letter from Hermelin to Mrs Mattison. We have been looking for adjectives, imperative verbs and exclamation marks.

Stay and Play with our families 🎨 🧩

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.

English – The detective mouse

In English we read the story ‘The Detective Mouse’. We found the adjectives, nouns, ‘and’ and un sounds.

English

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.

A Trip to the Farm.

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.

Our new English book

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.

Cinderella

Nursery have been reading ‘Cinderella’ this week. The children have enjoyed making a carriage, writing invitations to the ball and creating magic wands 🪄✨.

Mr Gumpys Outing

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.

Mystery Reader

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!

Illustration session at Sefton Park Library

Verb Prefixes

We practiced verb prefixes during sentence accuracy time! Some great sentences⭐️

World Book Day

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.

World Book Day

Year 4 joined an online assembly with the brilliant Michael Rosen. We really enjoyed his stories and poems.

Writing detectives.

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.

Aquarium Trip

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.

Artefacts from our new book

We looked at some artefacts and vocabulary related to our new book so that we could make predictions about the story.

Predictions in our English lesson

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.

Liverpool Children’s Festival of Reading with Kathryn White

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.

Reading at JMU

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.

English – The Promise

A nice range of work from our English book The Promise.

Reading Buddies

Our reading buddies are happy to be back together and it has been great to see them enjoying texts together around school.

English

Learning and investigating class 7’s new text.

English – hook lesson

Class 7 looked at items that are related to our new text

Abstract Nouns

The class have been learning about abstract nouns and have made some great sentences!

English Hook

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.

How to Build a Beautiful Home for a Bog Baby

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.

Whatever Next 📕

This week we created our own story map for “Whatever Next”.

English

The Naughty Bus has been upto mischief

English

Naughty Bus

Planetarium Trip

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.

Oral Storytelling – The Bog Baby

To help to prepare us for our writing, we worked together to retell the story with actions.

English

What will our new text be? Who will be the main character?

English

Oh no!!! What happened in class 7

English

Making posters for a superhero side kick

Juniper Jupiter!

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.

Preparing to write a diary

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.

English

Learning key vocabulary from the text and analysis an image

English

Looking at hook items from our new story

English

Qualities for a side kick

English

Hot seating Juniper Jupiter

Super SPAG Work

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.

Reading Buddies

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.

Comprehension

Today our comprehension work was based on a text about the Romans in Britain.

Planning Our Diary

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.

Fantastic storyboard English work.

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.

English

Were class 7 predictions correct? Revealing our new text.

English

Thinking about superhero powers

English

Creating alliterated names for class 7 children

English

Looking at hook items for our new class story

Oliver’s Vegetables

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.

SPAG-Parenthesis

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.

Superhero Crafts

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.

Henry’s Freedom Box

The class wrote down how Henry must have been feeling.

Making Predictions

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…

English

’The Lonely Beast’

Michael Rosen book signing!

Michael Rosen Event

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!

English

Sequencing ‘The lonely Beast’ story

English – Conscience Alley

Today in class 2 we did conscience alley trying to persuade Jack to either go up the Beanstalk or not!

Speech

Adjective work

Hello Lonely Beast!

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.

English in Reception

In English, the children worked very hard to independently read words and using a ruler they connected the word to the correct image.

Little Red

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.

English

Looking at hook items and finding a stranger sleeping in our classroom.

Prediction

We used the clues that had arrived in our classroom to write predictions about our new English story.

English writing

Here are a couple of examples of our writing contributions this half term, based on ‘The King who banned the Dark’

Phonics in Reception

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.

English

Further work on our Hermelin Book in class 7

Speaking & Listening

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.

The King who banned the dark

Hermelin the mouse detective

English

First read of our class text ‘Hermelin.’

Writer’s Knowledge

Class 4 used the Writer’s Knowledge wheel to generate accurate sentences that could be used in our own invention stories.

English

Class 7 exploring their new text

Y2 English

The class looked at writer knowledge using our sample text.

A World Above

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!

The King who banned the dark

Wonderful examples of work on our washing line, as the children immersed themselves in our new Literacy Counts unit.

Some drama to get into character

In English today we did some drama to understand how the characters of our story will feel when they see the gargantuan beast.

Spring Planting?

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.

Hermelin

English

We recapped on what we could see on Offley Street and looked at the notice board. Class 7 made wonderful predictions.

English

Offley Street. Who lives here? Is it a nice place to live? What can you hear on the video?

English

Class 7 found an old suitcase in our class! What was it for? What are the items in it for?

Conscience Alley

The children did brilliantly today, giving reasons for and against banning the dark!

Phonics Parent Meeting

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.

English

Continuing class 7 learning about Joe in ‘The Extraordinary Gardener’

Dual Narrative

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.

Finding Features of the Text

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.

English

The Extraordinary Gardener

The Extraordinary Gardener

Character profile of Joe

The Extraordinary Gardener

What does Joe like to do?

World Book Day

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.

World Book Day??

Class three have enjoyed world book day! It has been so fun and interesting seeing and hearing about each others costumes and favourite books?

First Impressions

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.

English

Additional hook items

English

Exploring hook items from our new story.

Aquarium trip!

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.

English

Creating our own story in the style of The Storm Whale.

English

Creating our own version of The Storm Whale.

English

Sequencing pictures and text from The Storm Wahl

Building a Biography

Today class 6 are researching information to build their biography of Earnest Henry Shackleton.

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.

LLP reading event

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.

Author Event

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!

Reading Buddies visit JMU

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.

English

The Storm Whale

Speech

recognising sensible and silly sentence

English – Hook

Looking at hook items from our story.

English

Looking at hook items from our new story

Speech

Developing observation skills during a game of Kim’s game.

Speech

Brown Bear

Speech

Clapping number of syllables in our names

Speech – syllables

Atmospheric Poems

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.

First Impressions

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.

Mysterious Bag found in class 5

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.

English Hook

The class were introduced to objects relating to their new English book today. They had some wonderful ideas, predictions and questions!!

The Journey

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.

Reading Buddies

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!

Writing Fun in Reception

Reception have been trying really hard this week to write sentences in phonics using capital letters, finger spaces and full stops.