English – Toftwood Infant and Junior School Federation

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.

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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.

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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!

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.

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Battle of the Bookworms

On Monday 20^th of May some children from years 5 and 6 participated in Battle of the Bookworms at Northgate High School. We sent two teams: Toftwood 1 which had Macey from GB6, Abigail GG6, William EW5, and Heather KH6 ; the other team from our school was Toftwood 2. This team had Ellie KH6, Orson GB6, Lily GB6 and Reeva RL5. There were also teams from 4 other schools.

The Battle of the Bookworms is a reading competition. There were 5 categories, each with 6 questions. We won a point for each questions we got correct, and the team with the most points at the end won. The teams from our school did amazingly well – Toftwood 2 came 3^rd place and toftwood 1 came 1^st place! The winners of the competition will get their school name engraved on the trophy.

“I love reading, so this was so much fun to participate in” Abigail GG6.

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!

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!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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!

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.