English

Reception

• Reception – English Autumn 1

  The reception children have been so busy in their first half term at school! They have been familiarising themselves with their new learning environments both inside and outside and have been getting stuck into all the mark making and writing opportunities that are available.

  They have started daily phonics lessons and have began learning the single sounds through stories, actions and songs.

  Reception have also started ‘Drawing Club’ and have been busy learning vocabulary and drawing characters, settings and adventures and creating passwords and secret codes from the texts ‘Baby Brains’ and ‘The tortoise, the dog and the farmer’ as well as the cartoon ‘Wacky Races.’

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

• Reception – Summer 2

  The children in Reception have been working hard to put into practise all the things they have learnt this year. They have been busy reading to themselves in their independent learning time, writing signs for the different areas in provision, making tickets for shows and labelling maps that they have made.

  

  

  They have also been practising their story writing skills and becoming much more independent, needing less help from an adult each time they write! Their topic has been ‘Around the World’ and the children have enjoyed writing about animals and habitats that they have been learning about.

  

• Reception – Su1 2024

  This half term, the topic in Reception has been ‘Once Upon a Time.’ The children have read a variety of traditional tales such as Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel and Goldilocks & The Three Bears. They have also listened to alternative versions of traditional tales such as Jack and the baked beanstalk, Goldilocks and just 1 bear and The 3 little wolves and the big bad pig.

  They have been applying their phonics skills through creating ‘wanted’ posters for the big bad wolf, drawing story maps and writing their own versions of the stories. The children have also practised retelling and acting out the stories, as well as playing with small world scenes. 

  

• Reception – Spring 2 2024

  This half term the children in Reception have been working really hard on recapping all of the digraphs they have learnt so far this year. This has included recapping the actions and songs to go with these actions. In phonics lessons, they have practised spotting these digraphs in words and sentences they are reading and they have also been trying to spell and write words that contain these digraphs. 

  In continuous provision, the children have continued to access phonics and literacy related resources to embed the learning they have been doing in phonics lessons. They have been looking through the class book containing stories they have written, writing recipes in Ted’s Den and reading words on buried treasure! They have also been writing during their role play, writing medical slips for animals at the vets and booking dentist appointments.  

  

  

  

  

• Literacy in Reception- Spring 1 2024

  This half term the children have continued to work very hard in their phonics lessons and have been busy learning many new digraphs and tricky words.

  Our topic has been ‘Fantasy’ and the children have been enjoying listening lots of stories such as Supertato, Room on the Broom and Aliens Love Underpants. They have also been acting out these stories using masks and props!

  In provision, the children have been busy exploring literacy activities such as writing potions & magic spells, leaving notes for the fairies to read and using picture cards to sequence stories.

  

  

• Reception – Literacy Autumn 2

  The children in Reception have continued to work hard in their phonics lessons and have learnt all of the single sounds. They have also started learning some tricky words too and remembering that they can’t sound these out!

  They have also been practising their blending and segmenting skills and have enjoyed activities in the tuff spots that help them to develop these skills. 

  Lots of mark making and writing continues to happen outside of phonics lessons and the children have been practising their writing skills both inside and outside.

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Year 1

• Year 1 – English Autumn 1

  The children have worked really hard this half term. We have focused on writing sentences by remembering to include capital letters, finger spaces and full stops as well as understanding that a sentence needs a subject and a verb. We have been embedding this learning over this half term by having a range of pictures, experiences and texts to write sentences about. One of these experiences was a farm visit by Wycomb Farm; the children wrote facts that they had learnt as well as writing about their favourite animal from this visit. We finished off this half term by thinking about questions we would like to ask to Ian, the farmer of Wycomb Farm as well as the characters from the story of The Three Little Pigs. This learning will lead into our letter writing next half term.

  

  

  

• Year 1 Summer 2

  This half term in year 1 we have been focusing on the traditional tale of ‘The Elves and the Shoemaker’. We linked this to the animation of ‘Le Petit Cordonnier’ which did not have dialogue.

  

  The children looked carefully at the language the traditional tale used and the punctuation to support emphasis. Each day the children developed ideas for the next part of the story and then used this work to create a written story for Le Petit Cordonnier. They really enjoyed learning about inverted commas, ellipsis and writing words in bold to stand out.

  The children wrote amazing stories and enjoyed sharing them in their classes!

  

• Year 1 – Summer 1

  This half term the children have been learning about both fiction and non-fiction texts. As part of their continuing topic of ‘Our Planet and Beyond’, the children wrote their own non-fiction booklet. The children learnt about the layout of different non-fiction texts, and what they should include.  Their final pieces contained a front cover and a contents page as well as information about planets, the moon and Earth. They really enjoyed sharing their own non-fiction books with children in Year 2.

  

  

  

  The children also enjoyed writing a letter to either Mel Clarke, a Paralympian who competed in London 2012 Olympics and won a silver medal in archery, or Sophie McKinna, who has been in the Tokyo Olympic games and will be going to Paris to compete this year in shotput.

  They have recapped their letter knowledge to write their own letters including the address, formal language and adding question marks after a question. We are hoping that we shall receive a reply and cannot wait to see the Olympics start this year!

  

  

• Spring 2

  The children in year 1 have absolutely loved sharing the book ‘Alan’s big scary teeth’ by Jarvis in our English lessons this half term. They found this text very funny and engaging! The children were able to talk about the events in the story and recall these to answer a range of questions about it.

  

  Before we started reading the text the children learnt about Alligators. They researched about their habitat, appearance and diet. They created a non-fiction fact file about alligators focusing on writing subheadings for each section.

  The children were able to use this information to support their discussions about the book and it also provided the children with a range of adjectives that could be used to describe Alan the alligator too! 

  By the end of the unit the children got in groups to create a role-play of the story – these were amazing to watch as part of an audience. They each chose a character and thought about the words that character would say as well as how they would act!

  

• Year 1 English Spring 1 Term

  This half term the children have become weather reporters and have really enjoyed this writing unit! They had a visit from Mr Bell, a meteorologist to start their Weather Experts topic. He spoke to the children about extreme weather but also gave some great advice for writing their own weather reports. Mr Bell provided the children with key words and phrases for their own reports.

  Each day the children used the enquiry skill for Science, to observe over time, and recorded the weather patterns as a class. We then watched the weather report for East Anglia and made a word bank of more key words and phrases.

  Before writing their weather report the children placed weather symbols on a map of the UK and used a script template to write their weather reports. Once finished, the children recorded their own weather report using Canva which made it look like they were really on the television!

  They absolutely loved being weather reporters and look forward to seeing some of them being meteorologists when they are older.

  

• Year 1 – English Autumn 2

  This half term, the children have read the book ‘Dear Dinosaur’ in our English lessons. The children received videos and emails from adults that work behind the scenes in school, explaining what their job entails. The book which focuses on giving and receiving letters, inspired the children to write letters to their chosen member of staff. The children thought of questions that they would like to ask as well as introducing themselves. Here at Toftwood, we have amazing staff members who were kind enough to then write back to the children and responded to their questions.

  

  

  The children then applied their letter writing skills to write a letter to Father Christmas explaining how they have worked hard this year and asking for a gift that they would like to receive. The children’s letters to Father Christmas were then delivered to the North Pole. The day after the letters were sent we received two presents under our class Christmas trees which included two books linked to Dear Dinosaur! They were Dear Spookysaur and Dear Chocosaur. The children thoroughly enjoyed reading these and making links to the other texts.

Year 2

• Year 2 – English Autumn 1

  This half term in English, the children have been solidifying their knowledge of sentence writing. They have been using capital letters and full stops to start and end their sentences. The children applied this knowledge when writing instructions to create a stop-animation superhero movie, which they based on their own comic books. The children also learned about the high quality text ‘Meerkat Mail’ by Emily Gravett. From this, they created a missing poster using adjectives, a letter using persuasive language and a fact file all about meerkats. They produced some lovely two page spreads to display their meerkat facts.

  

  

  

• Summer 2

  This term in Year 2 we have wrote a recount of our visit from ‘Mini Monsters’. We focused on the features of a recount, making sure we wrote in the past tense, used time adverbials, wrote in the first person and in chronological order.

  

  

  We also looked at the Little People Big Dreams book about Sir David Attenborough and talked about what a biography and an autobiography is. We did lots of research about Sir David Attenborough, making notes about his childhood, family, education, work at the BBC, David as a naturalist and his expeditions. We then put our notes into full sentences and wrote up our biographies. We also decided to make two-page spreads about Sir David and present our facts in an eye catching way.

  

  

  

  

• Year 2 Summer 1

  This half term the children in year 2 were surprised with instructions from the FLI (Federal literacy inspectors!) asking for help to create their own stories! Each day the children received challenges to support writing their own fiction book, including creating their own characters, settings and plot. The children loved making their very own books!

  

  

  

  

  

  

  The children also watched a film called ‘Embarked’ and answered questions about what they watched using their Vipers skills. They used this film as inspiration to describe the city and countryside. They then designed their own treehouses and wrote instructions about how to build them.

  

  

  Finally, year 2 looked at the Lifesize and Actual Size books. They were fascinated to see the different sizes of the animals as well as parts of the animals! They linked their English and Maths learning, by measuring the different parts of the animal using non-standard and standard measurements.

  

  

  

• Spring 2 – Year 2

  This term we have continued to explore poetry, particularly those about Winter. They have worked together to create word banks to help them write poetry using new vocabulary. We then looked at writing an acrostic poem with the word ‘frosty’.

  We have also looked at the traditional tale of Little Red Riding Hood and described the characters in the story by using expanded noun phrases. The children then listened to the story from the Wolf’s point of view and wrote questions they would like to ask the wolf which they did through some ‘hot seating’ drama. They then wrote a letter from the Wolf to Granny and a sequel to the Wolf’s story.

  

  

  

  

  

  

• Year 2 – English Spring 1

  During the spring term, the children in year 2 have explored many areas of writing and have been inspired by many types of stimulus.

  

  

  

  

  The first text children enjoyed reading was the story ‘The Storm Whale’ by Benji Davies. During this area of their learning, the children enjoyed researching about Whales and wrote a non-fiction factfile using their own research. They also wrote diary entries from the perspective of the whale and made predictions about what might happen as a sequel story!

  

  Our next stimulus was the Disney clip ‘Lava’, about two volcanoes who fall in love as they emerge from the Pacific Ocean. This inspired the children to learn about volcanoes and write a non-chronological report about them. They also researched the volcanic islands of Hawaii using various resources. The children then created their own holiday brochures trying to persuade people to visit there.

  

  

  

  

• Year 2 – English Autumn 2

  This half term the children in year 2 completed activities using the book ‘The Flood’ as a stimulus. They learnt about what to do in a flood and used their notes to make a fact file about how to stay safe.

  

  We watched the short film ‘Man on the Moon’ and used The Usborne Mini Astronaut’s Handbook’ for our next unit of work. The children wrote captions to go with parts of the story told in the film. They used it as a starting point to write a newspaper report about the sighting of a man on the moon.

  

  The children then learnt about the astronaut Tim Peake and took notes before using these as a basis for a fact file and then a diary entry from the astronaut.

  

  Our next learning focused on the story ‘How to Catch a Star’ By Oliver Jeffers. The children designed a rocket and wrote instructions about how to catch a star. They then wrote a recount of when we found a magical glittery star outside our classroom door.

  

  We then listened to Michael Morpurgo reading his story ‘Coming Home’ about the migration journey of a Scandinavian Robin. We learnt about the migration journeys of Spider Crabs, Arctic Terns and Basking Sharks. The children made notes about the animals and why they migrate. They turned their notes into a story map which they then used to write their own migration story.

  

  

  Finally, we made Speculaas biscuits and look at instructional writing. We talked about the key features of instruction, in particular recipes, and wrote our own recipes for making these Belgium treats.

Year 3

Summer 1 2024

This half-term in English, Year 3 have been very busy! First, the children exercised their persuasive skills by writing a letter to argue against a (thankfully, fictional) proposed build of housing on the Toftwood park. We enjoyed reading their well-reasoned and carefully considered persuasive letters, some of which were very convincing!

Following this, we began our unit of Haiku writing! We revisited our past unit of Fairytales and recapped the tale of 'Jack and the Beanstalk', before using this tale to help us create a Haiku all about the beanstalk. The children wrote some wonderful Haikus about the tall, twisting beanstalk, accurately following the 5-7-5 syllable pattern.

Finally, we have concluded this half-term by writing our very own adventure stories! In class, we have re-read our Spring 1 Guided Reading text 'The Velveteen Rabbit' and, feeling inspired, the children have planned and written a sequel to the classic children's story. It has been very interesting to read so many creative tales of what adventures Year 3 imagine the Velveteen Rabbit has been up to!

Spring 1 2024

This half-term, we have been exploring a range of units in English. We began the half-term with our very exciting topic on Fairytales! This involved looking closely at the common features of fairytales, which we identified in the traditional tale of 'Jack and the Beanstalk' alongside three other variations of the story. The children then incorporated their knowledge of what makes a good fairytale into writing their very own fantastic versions! Following this, we started our next unit on Diary Entries. After exploring examples of diaries and acting out the content which they would write about, the children then utilised their prior knowledge of the Stone Age from their history topic to write their very own diary entries as a child living in prehistoric Britain. It has been fascinating to read their wonderful work this half-term!

Autumn 2 2023

We began our half-term with a very exciting unit on poetry! The children have enjoyed reading an extract from Roald Dahl’s ‘George’s Marvellous Medicine’ and creating a performance, as well as exploring the use of alliteration and onomatopoeia through our very own class poem. Then, following our History unit on Ancient Egypt last half-term, we have developed our prior learning to produce an excellent piece of descriptive writing based on ‘The Egyptian Cinderella’, a text which places a modern twist on the traditional tale!

Continuing to consolidate our knowledge of the Ancient Egyptians, we have looked at non-chronological reports and focused on a range of topics including the gods and goddesses, mummification and how the Egyptians dressed. To develop our research skills, we have used child-appropriate websites such as History for Kids and Primary Homework Help to help us plan and write our very own non-chronological reports.

Autumn 2023

Our first topic in Year 3 has been descriptive writing, which has been linked to the Roald Dahl story of The BFG. Through a series of lessons the children recapped the features of a description which included nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs and expanded noun phrases. The children had the opportunity to identify and highlight these features in an extract from The BFG and used pictures from the film to consider their own verbs, adverbs and adjectives. Alongside this, the children learnt the spelling rules for changing verbs to the past and present tense. This series of lessons finished with the children writing their own description. They were encouraged to use the features they had been recapping along with a range of punctuation.

Year 4

Summer 1 2024

In English, we have been imagining what it would have been like to live in apartheid-era South Africa as we have been reading Journey to Jo’burg by Beverley Naidoo in our guided reading lessons. In writing, pupils practised features of a persuasive letter in order to write a letter to the then President, F W de Klerk, to persuade him to abolish apartheid. They loved developing their persuasive arguments using techniques such as rhetorical questions and emotive language.

Spring 1 2024

In our English lessons, we have covered a range of topics including explanation texts and nonsense poems. The children seemed to particularly enjoy our topic of nonsense poems where they created their own poem in the style of The Michael Rosen Rap and then had the opportunity to perform their creation to the rest of the class! They were also excited to research their favourite animals in order to write their own explanation text! They loved explaining where their chosen animal lived and what they eat. They were able to include many of the grammatical features that we have learnt about, including fronted adverbials, cause and effect conjunctions, expanded noun phrases and separated all of their writing into paragraphs with headings!

Autumn 2 2023

In English we focused on applying descriptive techniques to write an alternative ending to a traditional tale. It was amazing to see all of the children’s innovative ideas. They were able to confidently demonstrate all they had learned and were proud of what they had created, with lots of children wanting to share their own version of the story ‘Lost Happy Endings’ that included fronted adverbials and adventurous adjectives.

We also focused on persuasive writing; the children worked incredibly hard to persuade others to buy their food items. The children really enjoyed creating their own slogans and were able to use techniques such as alliteration, similes, metaphors and rhyme to make persuasive and effective adverts.

Autumn 2023

In English this term, we have been writing Fantasy stories. The children have loved using their imaginations to create characters and settings. We have been focussing on applying our new, year 4 writing skills, which are fronted adverbials, expanded noun phrases and vocabulary for effect.

We are now moving on to look at newspaper articles. The children are excited to write their articles based on a Roman Gladiator fight, which links to our history topic.

Year 5

Summer 2 2024

This half term, year 5 started by looking at traditional tales, such as "Rumpelstiltskin" and "The Musicians of Bremen", and identifying their features. They also read "The Iron Man" by Ted Hughes which is a modern traditional tale. They then planned and wrote their own traditional tale about a plastic character, spending time getting to know their character through hot-seating and cresting a map to familiarise themselves with the setting.

Next we looked at the features of playscripts. We were introduced to "The Tempest" by Shakespeare and then the children were able to use role play to explore the characters, speech and stage directions needed. They then worked in groups to type up their playscript, rehearse it and perform it to the class. They thoroughly enjoyed this and they were all very creative with the direction that their plays took, from the same starting point.

Summer 1 2024

During summer 1, Year 5 explored kenning poems, non-chronological reports and descriptive writing.

Within their non-chronological reports, the children researched the topic of the Titanic and after their research, they were able to plan their report. They carefully considered all of the features such as subheadings, facts, opinions, relative clauses, parenthesis and technical vocabulary. The children enjoyed publishing their reports!

An illustration from The Darkest Dark by Chris Hadfield inspired the children’s creativity for a piece of descriptive writing. The children explored the five senses, making sure they were using expanded noun phrases and thesauruses to describe a setting.

Spring 1 2024

During Spring 1, Year 5 focused on biographies, diaries and poetry.

We first focused on writing a biography all about Ole Kirk Kristiansen (the inventor of Lego). The children were fascinated about learning about his life and how Lego has become the amazing success that it is today.

Next, we studied a text called Romel’s Rainforest Home, which is written from a young Charchi Indian (aged 13), who lives in the rainforest in San Salvador. We considered what life would be like for him growing up in the rainforest and the children edited and published a diary entry, writing from the perspective of Romel.

In our poetry unit, Year 5 published poems in the style of a Railway Carriage by Robert Louis Stevenson. They carefully considered the rhyming couplets in their poems and some children even considered the syllables.

Autumn 2 2023

During Autumn 2, Year 5 studied instructions, descriptive writing and recounts. Within our instruction unit, the children became confident in defining imperative verbs. During our descriptive unit, Year 5 studied a short video, which stimulated their writing. It focused on a young girl (Alma), who ventures into town in the snow. Alma is drawn to a shop window by a familiar looking doll. She enters the shop. Read some examples of the children’s work to find out more! The children worked incredibly hard on including the five senses to create atmosphere. During Guided Reading, Year 5 read The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling. After building up a clear profile of Mowgli through our lessons, the children published a diary extract as if they were Mowgli. They carefully considered most of the features: 1st person, past tense, opinions and feelings.

Autumn 2023

During autumn 1, Year 5 have explored persuasive writing. Within our persuasive writing unit, the children studied formal and informal language. When focusing on formal persuasive writing, the children wrote a letter to Mrs Pedlow about changing something at school. The children had many changes they wished to implement, such as: making the school day shorter, shortening the week to 3 days, having an afternoon break and allowing the Year 5s to go swimming every day! Some children were even chosen to send their letter to Mrs Pedlow – I wonder how persuasive they can be?! After focusing on formal writing, we had a look at the features of informal writing. Once the children were confident with the differences, they were able to draft and neatly write a letter to somebody of their choice.

Year 6

Summer 2 2024

This term we have continued to link our English to our topic about Ancient Greece. We have written some instructions about how to catch a Greek mythical creature. In this the children were able to use imperative verbs, adjectival phrases and the general features of instructions such as bullet points, numbered steps and adverbs of time and place. In order to write appropriate instructions, the children used their research skills to find out about the different creatures, their habitats and diet. Once they had done this they used this information to create a fact file to support their instruction writing.

Summer 1 2024

We began the half term by watching a short video called “Replay”. This was a dystopian/apocalyptic story of 2 children surviving after a cataclysmic occurrence. They re-wrote the story in diary style from the point of view of one of the characters. They used their knowledge of diary writing, dialogue to move the story forward and creating atmosphere in a setting.

After SATS, year 6 have linked their writing in English to their topic about Ancient Greece. We read the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur and wrote a diary account, imagining they were Theseus after he killed the Minotaur. This focused on the skills of writing from the point of view of another person, and describing characters and settings.

Spring 1 2024

This term we have been learning about the imaginary moon of Pandora, the setting for the film Avatar. The children created their own imaginary creature and wrote a non-chronological report about it. They decided on its appearance, habitat and diet and wrote paragraphs using formal language, adverbial and prepositional phrases.

They have now started to write a fantasy story set on Pandora. So far we have practised writing settings, creating atmosphere and will be using dialogue to move our stories forward. We look forward to sharing some of them with you at the end of the half term.

Autumn 2 2023

In order to complete our work on the Second World War we wrote a non-chronological report on its history and events. We pulled together our knowledge of the lead up to the war, everyday life for ordinary people, including evacuation and rationing, and the Holocaust. We then wrote a full, illustrated double –page report on this.

In Autumn 2, we watched a short film called The Alchemists Letter. This generated a lot of creative writing focussing on imagery and writing from the point of view of a different person.

As we moved towards Christmas we read some rap poems by Carl Nova, a writer and musician, and wrote our own Christmas poem in his style.

Autumn 2023

This half term Year six have been learning about the second World War. We have been reading “Carrie’s War” in guided reading which has helped us to understand what life was like for children evacuated during the Blitz.