Year Groups 

In Nursery we are passionate about sharing our love of reading with the children. Reading and storytelling promotes brain development and imagination, develops language and emotions, and strengthens relationships. Reading and sharing stories are embedded in all areas of the curriculum in Nursery and lays the foundation for children to develop a life-long love of reading. 

Books are everywhere! Throughout the learning space you will find a range of fiction and non-fiction books that are accessible to the children and we  observe them reading to their friends, to the dolls and puppets or alone in a quiet spot. The children love sharing familiar books and are beginning to recognise books written by the same author. They enthusiastically participate in the stories by joining in with repeated refrains, rhyming words and predicting what happens next.  We have a growing number of authors in Nursery who have ‘published’ their own books and have displayed them on the book shelves for everyone to enjoy.

Traditional tales are a favourite in Nursery and really capture children’s imagination, creativity and reasoning skills. This term through our unit of inquiry the children have immersed themselves in the stories, ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’ and ‘The Tiger who came to Tea.’  They are developing their skills to retell, reenact, sing and role play these stories using puppets, small world play and props that they have made.  As part of Book Week, we participated in an author visit with Pippa Chorely. We enjoyed hearing the story ‘Counting Sheep’ and put our minds together to help Shep the sheep solve his problem of getting over the fence. After hearing the story we got busy making our own Shep the sheep puppets with his colourful wings.

The Kindergarten learners are excited by books, stories, puppet shows, role play, reading and stories.  We enjoy and encourage a print rich environment both inside and outside too.  Throughout our different areas of work and play you will find labels, tickets, cook books, learner made books, books linked to specific areas such as math, science, construction and art.  We want our learners to know and appreciate the wealth of knowledge that books give us.

We work on phonics and reading daily in our classrooms using the Letters and Sounds programme, Jolly Phonics songs and actions.  The learners are excited in this discovery part of their journey to becoming readers.  The enjoy sharing favourite stories and writing for a great variety of purposes in the classroom.  We have an airport set up as part of our Journeys unit, the learners are making printed material by hand to make this experience more authentic. 

All of our learners love a good story, some favourite authors are Julia Donaldson, Lynley Dodd, Eric Carle, Andrea Beaty, Antoinette Portis and Oliver Jeffers.  This week we have enjoyed hearing from visiting authors and going out of our pod to the book fair and the story telling space, it's made for a fabulous week of reading and books!

The Year 1 teachers are passionate about instilling a lifelong love of reading in our learners. It is exciting to watch the learners’ development as they start to gain independence in their reading. Throughout the year, learners develop their decoding skills, fluency, expression and comprehension during reading circles as well as independent and partner reading activities. Our current Unit of Inquiry has seen the learners applying their reading skills  to conduct research into forces. The learners have been reading a variety of nonfiction books and exploring the Epic! digital library to find interesting facts about simple machines, which they have confidently presented to their class. 

This week's exciting Book Week activities built on the children’s enthusiasm for reading. They thoroughly enjoyed the interactive poetry reading and story sessions with authors Sara Hirsch, Pippa Chorley and our big Year 11 buddies. It has been great to see how these opportunities spark the imaginations of our younger learners and even inspired some of the children to attempt to write their own stories outside of school. We look forward to encouraging our budding authors to share the stories they write throughout the next term. 

The Year 2s had a wonderful way to welcome in our new unit, coinciding beautifully with book week.  ‘People use stories to express themselves’, a fantastic exploration into everything stories and reading. The learners were fully immersed in provocations this week that included, role play, puppets, stop motion movies, sand art, comics and the use of sound effects. They used the provocations to retell the fairytale of the three little pigs. Listening at the start to familiarise themselves with the story, and then delving into their retells in various forms. It is important that we foster the love of reading and by providing opportunities to have access to media that tells stories in different ways will help to encourage the need to read for pleasure. Reading to your child for at least 15 minutes a day can increase their love of books. A special effort to include the expressions and the funny voices to make the stories come alive will help your child to develop their own reading skills. Reading a book is just one form of reading, we can read everywhere;  print, cereal boxes, signs in the street, menus at restaurants, closed captions on our favourite tv shows, these are all ways to encourage reading, and not to forget that this too does not have to be in English. Reading in your home language is a skill and development that too should be encouraged. The learners have had wonderful highlights this week of all things books and reading, Sara Hirsch and Pippa Chorley author visits, book fair, D.E.A.R (Drop Everything And Read) to end with the ultimate character dress up. As we continue through the UOI the learners will make connections with how stories are told for different reasons, and how ideas, cultures and values are reflected in stories. We look forward to exploring these ideas and more.

In Year 3, we eagerly look for opportunities to teach transdisciplinarily (wow - that was a mouthful!). This means we try to make links between our reading and spelling programme in Language Arts, and what we are learning in our Unit of Inquiry. 

Our current unit, 'Forces change our natural environment', is all about exploring the natural world and how it changes over time. Our students have been diving into non-fiction texts, analysing their features, and connecting what they learn in Language Arts with this new Unit of Inquiry.

Our goal is to foster a love for reading and research, and to empower our learners to ask questions, investigate and seek answers. We have a fantastic range of age-appropriate websites and e-books that will help your child pursue their inquiry questions and present their findings to families at our Year 3 Exhibition in Term 4.

We're thrilled to be able to provide such a rich learning experience for our learners and are looking forward to seeing all the amazing things they'll achieve. Thank you for supporting your child's learning journey with us!

Some Year 4 what they enjoyed about reading. Here are just a few responses. "It plants pictures that fill my mind.'  'It transported me to another time and place'. 'I find out new information.'  'I like discovering new words.' 'You can explore other people's worlds.' 'Reading can change the way you feel.'  'Stories contain puzzles'. 'I love reading about history.'  'Reading fires up my imagination.'  'Reading inspires me to write.' 'It's just... Fun!'  

Reading comes in lots of different forms - reading text, poems, maps, diagrams, photos with captions, adverts, letters, emails, diaries, etc. Learners are given opportunities every day to develop their decoding and comprehension skills when reading, listening to reading and supporting visual language features. To support our Unit of Inquiry in Term 3, we focused more on the comprehension skills relating to nonfiction text such as summarising information, identifying keywords, recognising facts versus opinions and making connections and generating related questions. In Term 2, within our 'How we express ourselves' Unit of Inquiry, learners developed their skills of visualising, identifying problems and solutions, and making predictions and inferences while exploring fiction texts.  Learners participate in a range of reading activities each week. These include Guided Reading Circles and Literacy Circles; independent reading time; shared reading sessions and listening to stories or nonfiction texts. Our Units of Inquiry give plenty of opportunities for developing research skills such as skimming and scanning, summarising using keywords and creating mind maps of what is read. Hand in hand with our skills-building activities run the all-important exploration of books, both real and digital, and reading for pleasure. 

'Today a reader, tomorrow a leader', Margaret Fuller. 

Our learners are surrounded by written and visual language that they can interpret and use critically and creatively everyday. Reading is information, reading is knowledge, reading exercises our brain, reading develops empathy. This week we were fortunate enough to be inspired by Sara Hirsch, an award winning international poet. Sara shared how reading is essential for writing. It expands our vocabulary, shares messages and is so much fun. Neil Humphreys, a Singapore based author shared his top tips for writing books, so that they are exciting for others to read.

In Year 5 our reading programme consists of a variety of approaches, that support learners in their learning and application of reading skills and strategies.  In our 'Who We Are' unit of inquiry, learners have used their research and thinking skills in every step of the inquiry process. This has provided a context for reading mileage, use of comprehension strategies and increased vocabulary knowledge. Learners have identified keywords, developed their own Cornell notes, synthesised information and creatively designed a Nex Talk to present to their class. 

One collaborative approach to teaching reading is Literature Circles. This provides a fantastic opportunity for a group of learners to discuss the deeper meaning of the same book. The structure of this approach supports and scaffolds learners to be successful readers and writers. Literature Circles is organised into four key parts: reading the book, taking on a role and completing the activity, participating in the group meeting, self-management and planning. The different activity roles include: discussion director, word wizard, literary luminary,  illustrator, summariser and predictor.  Learners also develop their self-management, communication and social skills, as they take responsibility for monitoring how their group members are progressing, take turns to lead their group meeting and actively participate in discussions.  

Reading is embedded in all areas of our daily learning and curriculum. Reading maths questions, following written instructions, referring to success criteria and following checklists are just a few.  Your child is actively reading everyday and expanding their vocabulary knowledge.

Top tips for encouraging reading at home can include: 

-reading for a purpose or to find something out, 

-reading a book to your child (this could be a chapter or picture book), 

-finding an author that they are 'hooked' on, 

-visiting a public library together, 

-accessing audio books, 

-watching a movie and then reading the book (or vice versa),

-providing time for everyone in the family to find joy in reading, 

-gifting a book voucher for a birthday or special occasion. Everyone loves choosing their very own book!

Dear Parents and Guardians,

We are excited to share with you how we are incorporating Language Arts into our current unit of inquiry, "Sharing the Planet". This unit focuses on understanding the impact of humans on environmental systems, such as mangrove rainforests.

As part of this unit, learners are developing their researching and writing skills with the aim of creating persuasive texts. To support this, we have been exploring different resources related to environmental issues, such as articles, videos and interactive online educational activities.

We are pleased to see learners taking ownership and demonstrating their understanding of how humans impact the environment. They are developing critical thinking skills and becoming more confident in expressing their opinions and ideas when writing and presenting. This is also evident in during home learning as they explore small actions which will have an impact on themselves and hopefully the wider community.

As always, we encourage you to support your child's learning at home by reading and discussing environmental issues and encouraging them to practice their researching and writing skills. Together, we can help them become responsible global citizens who are aware of the impact they have on the world around them.

We thank you for your continued support as our learners continue their journey.

The Year 6 Team.