Engaging Readers in English
This term we have continued with our focus of engaging our children with writing. Spelling has played a big part this term as the Reception to Year 6 took part in the Great Heronsgate Spelling Bee where we found the top spellers across the school. Four children in Year 5 and 6 won their Spelling Bees and got the opportunity to go to Discovery Primary for a Spelling Bee within our cluster of schools. EYFS have also been honing their fine motor skills this term and the children enjoyed an after school club to help develop their skills.
Fine Motor Skills in EYFS
Throughout the year, it has been an ongoing effort, to help the children to develop their fine motor skills and improve their handwriting. In Early Years, fine motor skills areas have been implemented with daily provisions to give the children opportunities to participate in physical activities which contribute towards the development of their fine motor skills. These activities include: cutting, sticking and pasting, drawing, colouring, building with Lego bricks and many others. Through our weekly home learning review, parents/carers have also been informed about the importance their children’s engagement in various fine motor skills activities and each week they have been provided with suggested cost effective activities which they can do with their children at home. In addition to the the daily provisions, there has also been two terms of Fine Motor Skills after school club to give children both in Reception and Year One on the Thamesmead campus the opportunity to participate in creative activities which further promote the development of their fine motor skills.
Language Choices in Year 2
One of Year 2’s core texts was ‘Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters’. They started by making predictions about the characters in the book and discussed the author’s language choices. Then the children wrote a setting description. The completed completed drama activities such as hot seating to understand the character and asked them questions in role. This then supported their writing where they wrote a letter of advice to one of the characters. Children were encouraged to use conjunctions, expanded noun phrases, different sentence types and a variety of punctuation in their writing.
Year 4’s Egyptian Cinderella
Year 3 have been reading the Egyptian Cinderella to link with their Ancient Egyptian history unit. Children made links between this story and the familiar tradition story of Cinderella. Using the structure of the story, they created their own version by developing their own contrasting characters, settings and special object lost.
The Joy of Writing in Year 5
As well as joining in with the Spelling Bee, Year 5 looked at a brand new text this term called ‘I talk like a River’ by Jordan Scott. When a boy who stutters feels isolated, alone, and incapable of communicating in the way he'd like, it takes a kindly father and a walk by the river to help him find his voice. Year 5 wanted to help the boy in the story find other ways of communicating so they wrote persuasive leaflets to support children to find the joy of writing. Year 5 also enjoyed using journals this term to explore their own thoughts, feelings and emotions.