During our unit, 'How We Express Ourselves,' we are focusing on developing literacy skills as part of the Language Arts curriculum. It has been very exciting observing children independently engaging in mark making and writing during their play. In Nursery, the children have many opportunities to draw, write and experiment with fine motor resources in the indoor and outdoors environment. The children have been enthusiastically writing for different purposes, such as drawing pictures, creating books, making cards and signs. The development of writing is fascinating and we are amazed with children’s interest and motivation to mark make.

The children are starting to see what they can achieve and are proud of themselves. We regularly celebrate children’s writing and this is another motivator for children to engage in their independent writing. In order to support engagement in this area, it’s really important to model being a writer. We regularly show the children how we use writing as a form of communication and self-expression. We look forward to continuing this unit until the end of term and observing how children transfer their knowledge to their independent inquiries.

As part of this unit, the Kindergarten learners were asked to share a piece of artwork that holds a special meaning to them or a family member. They talked about what they could see, what they thought and what they wondered when they presented to the class. Some of the learners were so inspired by a peer's sharing of Vincent Van Gogh's painting 'The Irises' that they decided to write a letter to Ms. Judy, our principal. This demonstrated to our learners that writing is done for a variety of purposes. Their aim - to ask the school for their financial help to purchase the beautiful artwork. Ms. Judy thought long and hard and had to break the sad news to them that despite their determination to bake and sell 50 million cupcakes, it still wouldn't be enough to purchase the painting and it would take a very long time! However, she did gift the class a copy of the famous painting.

The learners have also been keen to improve their storytelling skills by sharing well-loved stories and traditional tales such as 'The Three Little Pigs', 'Goldilocks and the Three Bears' and 'The Elves and The Shoemaker.' They transferred their newly honed narrative skills to the new fairy garden, creating imaginative scenes and fabulous tales whilst engaged in their play. The boys and girls in Kindergarten have been great communicators and thinkers during their independent inquiry into language arts through inquiry.

This term, Year 1 is exploring the central idea that ‘People can apply their understanding of forces to invent and create’. This is very much a science-based unit and one of the many connections with Language Arts is through procedure writing. ‘A procedure tells how to make or do something’. The learners have been engaging with experiments and investigations in order to find out all about forces and motion, with access to provocation stations they also had experience to explore different simple machines in action. Procedure writing gives them the opportunity to revisit the explorations and put into words and pictures their findings.

The budding scientists are writing up their experiment ideas, making predictions and hypothesising the outcomes. They follow a cycle, starting with an aim, moving onto the materials used, making their predictions and then, the steps they need to follow and ending with the results and conclusion. They are learning how to write procedures and have noticed that this style of writing is everywhere within our daily lives, from recipes, to a set of instructions.

Year 2 began their new inquiry into 'Sharing the Planet' through the Central Idea - 'People's actions impact living things and their environment'. Our provocation was quite literally out of this world, when a spaceship with some friendly alien visitors landed on our school field. The learners had to consider the needs of each alien and find a suitable environment where they could rest before continuing on their journey. This led to rich discussions of things the learners already knew about habitats and things they would like to learn more about as we progress through this unit. The provocation inspired our Language Arts lessons as our budding writers learned about adjectives before writing a detailed description of an alien of their own creation.

Next week, we will begin exploring the different habitats and the animals they provide homes for. The children will be developing their research skills and learning how to share their knowledge in written information reports.

The Language Arts programme consists of reading, writing, viewing and presenting and speaking and listening. In Year 3, we are beginning the transition from ‘learning to read’ to ‘read to learn’ as we teach them how to look for information in books and use it effectively in their writing. As we use a transdisciplinary approach, we connect the Language Arts programme to our Units of Inquiry. In our ‘How We Express Ourselves’ unit that we just wrapped up, the learners were taught how to use the text features of non-fiction books and websites to research their home culture. We focused on the reading and writing skills of summarising information, asking questions and taking notes. The information they found was then used in their cultural presentation which they presented to their peers and received feedback on next steps to further improve their presentation.

As we start our next Unit of Inquiry, ‘Sharing the Planet’, Year 3 will be learning persuasive writing techniques. They will learn how to write an effective introduction, conclusion and begin to create simple paragraphs. The topic for their writing piece will be connected to a local issue e.g. pollution, food waste, single use plastic that we are learning about in our unit. Through this transdisciplinary approach, learners develop a deeper understanding of the concepts and are able to see how the elements of Language Arts are used in an authentic way.

Over the past few weeks, our learners have been considering the central idea, 'The fashion industry tells a story.' Within the Language Arts element of this Unit of Inquiry, we have focused on developing literacy skills connected with narrative writing. Year 4 has reviewed how to structure a short story, explored the power of description and strong verbs within a story to create characters, setting and atmosphere and tackled the complexity of speech punctuation.

Learners follow the 'Writing Process' which includes self-editing, peer-editing writing and sharing writing. Effective writing is supported by extensive reading. Year 4'sreading programme comprises of 2 weekly Guided Reading sessions and daily opportunities to read with a partner, read to oneself, listen to 'read-along' audiobooks and read texts to gather information. This term, some learners have formed 'Literacy Circles' in which they collaborate in small groups, each learner with a defined role focused on specific reading skills.

At the end of each reading session, the 'Clever Connector', 'Succinct Summariser', 'Inquisitive Investigator' or 'Word Wizard' shares their reflections with the group. Alongside reading and writing are opportunities to develop speaking and listening skills. This takes the form of discussions, debates, role-playing, collaborative brainstorming and formal presentations of personal Inquiries. Our goal is to give our learners the opportunities and support to extend their full range of communication skills including digital literacy.

Our new unit of inquiry explores the central idea, 'Scientific inquiry helps us to investigate changing states of matter'. The purpose of our current focus in Language Arts is to explicitly teach instructional writing skills so that learners will know how to write instructions for their own scientific investigations. This has been introduced through a variety of writing approaches. Learners have watched videos and read models to scaffold sequencing and organisation of ideas. They have made connections to previous writing and co constructed success criteria for them to use over the coming weeks. Examples of writing engagements include 'how to trap a dragon', 'how to catch Santa', scientific experiments and a focus on connectives and descriptive vocabulary. It has been fantastic to listen to instructions that are both informative and entertaining. We have so many creative thinkers and writers in Year 5.

Our current unit 'How we express ourselves' has given our Year 6 learners many opportunities to both appreciate and explore their own creativity in many different ways. Poetry, various forms of art, composing electronic music and exploring movement which relates to them personally during PHE, have all been inquiries our learners have explored. At the moment, the planning and scripting of 88 movies is in full swing. Learners are arriving early and taking their snack and lunch times to ensure they have the opportunity to show 'excellence' and do their very best. There is a lot to do and it is sure to be a very exciting few weeks before the deadline.

Wish us luck!