To celebrate National Storytelling Week, across the school the teachers visited different classes during 'Once upon a time' to share their favourite books with the pupils. There was also a Buddy Reading session where different classes paired up with each other so that older pupils could share stories with the younger pupils. During their English lessons, every class focussed on a different story to inspire their reading and writing skills.
Reading at Gade Valley 2022/2023
The pupils have really enjoyed reading a range of books this year. Here are some examples of the books that were displayed during our Open Evening in July.
Chaplins Pantomime
The pupils thoroughly enjoyed watching a special performance of Goldilocks and the Three Bears by the Chaplins Panto company.
Learning in Autumn 2022
Here are some examples of early writing in Reception. The pupils have been practising writing some CVC words and phrases using their knowledge of the phase 2 phonemes.
Year 1 found out about penguins and then wrote fact files about them. They included lots of interesting information.
In Year 3, the pupils wrote recounts about their trip to Hudnall Park. They tried to use time conjunctions and emotive language in their writing.
Year 5 wrote descriptions of the Firebird. They used their writing toolkits to help them include the features of descriptive writing.
2021-2022 Learning Journey
Learning in Summer
Learning in Spring
In Nursery, the pupils have enjoyed sharing books and stories with their friends and other year groups during Buddy Reading and DEAR. They are also working really hard to write their names.
In Reception, the pupils wrote instructions about how to make honey sandwiches. They were very attentive!
Pupils in Year 1 re-wrote the story of Funnybones. They had to identify repetitive text, use time words and adjectives.
Using inspiration from the book 'Traction Man', Year 2 created their own Traction Man adventure books. They tried to use lots of description to make their stories engaging for the reader.
In Year 3, the pupils created their own explanation texts about volcanoes. They included all the key layout features including sub titles and diagrams. They tried to use lots of subject specific vocabulary and design a layout to interest the reader.
In Year 6, as part of World Book day, our whole school looked at the book ‘Sharing a Shell’ by Julia Donaldson. The pupils created a play script of the story and then used Scratch to recreate the opening scene of the book. The pupils programmed some of the characters to move and speak!
Learning in Autumn 2
In Nursery, the pupils have been learning to make marks using different materials and equipment.
In Reception class, some of the pupils chose to write about fireworks and bonfire night. They applied some of the skills that they had learnt in phonics lessons to their independent writing.
The Year 1 pupils have been writing letters to Father Christmas! Before writing their letters, they wrote a list and then planned their ideas.
Year 2 have been writing recounts about The Great Fire of London from the perspective of Samuel Pepys. They wrote in the past tense and also used lots of descriptive language.
In Year 3, the pupils have been learning to write instructions on "How to Catch a Dragon". They had to include all the key features including: an introduction, imperative verbs, adverbs and time conjunctions.
Year 4 have been learning about Greek myths. They chose their favourite one and then rewrote it in 1st person before producing these fantastic booklets.
Year 5 have been studying the book ‘A Christmas Carol’ by Charles Dickens as part of their learning on fiction from our literary heritage. The class summarised the story and wrote a description of the character Scrooge.
In Year 6, the pupils have written persuasive letters to Mr Barron about why school should not be opened on a Saturday. The Year 6 class was particularly keen on school not being opened for an extra day each week!
This week, the Eco-Council announced DEAR (Drop Everything And Read) by playing musical instruments around the school! All the pupils and adults stopped what they were doing and started to read. It was great fun!
The pupils absolutely loved watching Dick Whittington performed by the drama company 'Chaplins Panto4kids'.
Learning in Autumn 1
In Nursery, the pupils have been developing their fine motor skills to aid their early writing.
In Reception, during International Space Week, the pupils read the book ‘Whatever Next’ by Jill Murphy. They enjoyed role playing as Baby Bear, using wellington boots as their ‘space shoes’, a colander for a ‘space helmet’ and a cardboard box as a ‘rocket’.
In Year 1, the pupils have been reading the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Firstly, they sequenced the story and then re-wrote it using zig-zag books.
In Year 2, the pupils created treasure maps and then wrote instructions explaining how to find the treasure. They used directional language and imperative verbs in their sentences. After their exciting trip to Hudnall Park, they wrote recounts all about the day.
In Year 3, the pupils have written their own Fables. They were inspired by The Hare and The Tortoise as well as “War and Peas” by Michael Foreman. They had to include all the key features and make sure that the moral of our fables was clear. They wrote and illustrated their own fable books.
In Year 4, the pupils wrote recounts about their trip to Hudnall Park. They also created character descriptions for their own bandits. For both pieces of writing, they were extremely motivated!
In Year 5, the pupils have written diary entries as an Egyptian slave based on the book ‘Egyptian Diaries’ by Richard Platt.
Following on from their fantastic Year 6 Camp Out Experience, the pupils wrote diary entries. They were really proud of their handwriting! They thought it was great having a record of what they did!
Rainbow Reading: our summer reading challenge. Congratulations to this year's winners!
2020 - 2021 Learning Journey
Here is some of the children’s wonderful work from the summer term 2021. We are so proud of them for developing their English skills.
‘The Secret Sky Garden’ by Linda Sarah and Fiona Lumbers has inspired lots of cross-curricular learning throughout the whole school, including persuasive posters, character descriptions, persuasive letters, outdoor gardening projects, creating kites, and much more!
We have all thoroughly enjoyed reading and exploring the book ‘Here We Are’ by Oliver Jeffers. Here are some of the wonderful displays and children’s work inspired by the book.
World Book Day at Gade Valley!
Celebrating our Duck-themed Book Week with a range of work based on different stories.
We really enjoy reading with children from other classes during Buddy Reading.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Day: We celebrated this fantastic story by Roald Dahl during a special day dedicated to the book.
Reception Class created a dance demonstrating how the machines work in the chocolate factory.
Celebrating Reading and Writing at Gade Valley
The children in the Nursery celebrated Winnie the Pooh Day. They listened to stories, investigated honey and went looking for Winnie the Pooh's friends in the Hundred Acre Wood.
"Greetings to you, the lucky finder of this Golden Ticket, from Mr Willy Wonka! I shake you warmly by the hand! Tremendous things are in store for you! Many wonderful surprises await you!" Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate factory.
Here are our first lucky reading winners!
Random Reading Competition winners
EYFS and KS1 took part in a Circus Adventures workshop with Perform Drama Company.
Top
Cookies
Unfortunately not the ones with chocolate chips.
Our cookies ensure you get the best experience on our website.
Please make your choice!
Cookies
Some cookies are necessary in order to make this website function correctly. These are set
by default and whilst you can block or delete them by changing your browser settings, some
functionality such as being able to log in to the website will not work if you do this.
The necessary cookies set on this website are as follows:
Website CMS
A 'sessionid' token is required for logging in to the website and a 'crfstoken' token is
used to prevent cross site request forgery.
An 'alertDismissed' token is used to prevent certain alerts from re-appearing if they have
been dismissed.
An 'awsUploads' object is used to facilitate file uploads.
Matomo
We use
Matomo cookies
to improve the website performance by capturing information such as browser and device
types. The data from this cookie is anonymised.
reCaptcha
Cookies are used to help distinguish between humans and bots on contact forms on this
website.
Cookie notice
A cookie is used to store your cookie preferences for this website.
Cookies that are not necessary to make the website work, but which enable additional
functionality, can also be set. By default these cookies are disabled, but you can choose to
enable them below: