In the Tiny Tigers classroom, the children have been focusing on different ways of starting their sentences when writing about Winnie the Pooh.  The children have been using writing materials independently, both inside and outside on their large wipe board.  The children’s handwriting skills are really improving too as they have been practising their pencil control skills! 

In Busy Bees, the children have been reading a book called ‘The Journey’ by Francesca Sanna and learned about a little boy who lost his boat. The children re-wrote this story using their own innovated ideas about something they could have lost and a journey they went on to retrieve it. They used lots of amazing adjectives to describe the destinations. Miss Wood then lost an item of her own and the Busy Bees had to conduct a search for the missing item! They searched for clues and then made descriptive posters.

During Summer 1, the Eager Elephants really enjoyed their circus-themed writing topic. This topic created many writing opportunities for the Year 2 children. First, the children participated in a super circus workshop experience which inspired them to write some terrific recounts of their day. The children enjoyed writing character descriptions for clowns and other circus acts. They also used their senses to imagine that they were at the circus and describe the amazing atmosphere. Eager Elephants also thoroughly enjoyed making up their own circus stories about runaway animals, injured performers and collapsed tents. 

In Year 3, the Dazzling Dolphins have based their literacy around their topic of Italy.

They took a virtual tour of Rome, made notes and then used informal tone to write postcards. We used all of our senses to write a description of Venice as if they were floating down the Grand Canal. Later in the term, the children wrote persuasive phrases to help sell a Ferrari, then turned them into a script for a Ferrari advert.

Year 4’s text during Summer term 1 was ‘The Explorer’ by Katherine Rundell. When reading the text, the children explored lots of new vocabulary, such as Abacaxi (which means Pineapple in Portuguese!) To begin with, the children created small rafts, designed to help get the children in the story to safety. This inspired them to produce their own innovated chapter and focus on using key writing skills in their work. The Super Sloths also progressed to write a non-fiction text about Madagascan animals, writing a setting description and even jungle-themed poetry! Year 4’s last piece of writing was a letter to the world, informing them on the impact of deforestation. To prepare for this writing, the children conducted a debate with the big question; Should deforestation be made illegal? It was great to see the class using their voice to express their opinion and to consider a balanced argument. During this term, Year 4 ensured that they were using fronted adverbials in their writing and aimed to use at least 3 in each piece of writing.

In Year 5, the children have really enjoyed using Onjali Q Rauf’s ‘The Boy at the Back of the Class’ as their stimulus text for writing. The children developed real empathy for the main character called Ahmet who was a refugee from Syria. This empathy helped them to craft some fantastic pieces of writing from the perspective of Ahmet when describing his first day in England. This book also helped to inspire the children to verbalise their feelings towards what they could do as individuals and as a community to help people like Ahmet live better lives. This led to formal letter writing to local MP Aaron Bell to explain how Silverdale and Newcastle-Under-Lyme could help any incoming refugees.

During Summer 1, the Learning Leopards completed a couple of short writing units based on videos from the Literacy Shed. For their first project, they created non-chronological reports about the fictional planet Pandora. The children then learned about the ‘True Story of the 3 Little Pigs’ and wrote persuasive police reports about who they believed to be the real perpetrators in the story.