Reading into Writing: Blog items
Year 5 - Reading into Writing - Stories from other Cultures
Date: 20th Nov 2025 @ 10:35am
This week in Year 5, our Reading into Writing journey has taken us on an exciting exploration of stories from another culture. We have been analysing WAGOLLs (What A Good One Looks Like) based on Aboriginal tales, focusing on their unique features, themes, and language. This deep dive is helping us understand how cultural context shapes storytelling and is preparing us to draft and write our own stories inspired by stories in the Dreamtime.
Year 4 - Finding Features in Texts
Date: 20th Nov 2025 @ 8:01am
As part of our 'Reading into Writing' journey, pupils in year 4 have been identifying the features of play scripts. After a class discussion exploring a examplar play script, pupils worked in pairs to identify the features in a range of examples, including extracts from Jack and the Beanstalk and George's Marvellous Medicine. Pupils will now begin to plan, draft and publish their own play script.
Date: 17th Nov 2025 @ 6:19pm
In Year 1 this week we are reading the story 'Leaf Man.' We began the week by unpicking the key vocabulary in the story, learning the meaning of any new words and retelling the key parts of the story. Throughout the week we have then printed our own leaf character and written sentences to describe where our leaf character may travel. We have also completed lots of different activities in our provision, including creading AB patterns, matching numeral to quantity and accurately counting within 10.
Date: 17th Nov 2025 @ 11:55am
We started off the lesson by using our Oracy skills to explain what we could see in pictures from the First World War. Then went on to mind-mapping as many adjectives about the trenches and what is was like living in these horrible conditions. We then used these adjectives to write our own descriptive sentences.
Date: 14th Nov 2025 @ 10:36am
Today, the children celebrated Children in Need. They came to school dressed in something spotty or stripy and donated money to the charity.
In the afternoon, we had a whole school assembly to celebrate this good cause.
Take a look at our photos!
Date: 6th Nov 2025 @ 8:21pm
In our Oracy lesson to start this half term, we looked at Social and Emotional Working with others. We recapped how we show we’re listening and how to take turns appropriately by listening carefully but also responding using our ABC talk tactics. We looked at problems, such as being stranded on an island surrounded by wild animals and we discussed what our solution would be. The children organised themselves into talking trios to discuss these problems and then used the agree, build and challenge stem sentences to support their discussions as a whole group.
Date: 6th Nov 2025 @ 4:03pm
In Redwoods we have been focusing on bonfire night and Diwali this week. We have learnt about this wonderful celebration and its importance within the Sikh and Hindu religion. Together we discussed how this compared to festivals and special times we celebrate. Working in pairs we read instructions on how to make a salt dough Diya lamp. Working tohgether we made the salt dough mixtures measuring the correct amount out before making our Diya lamp shape.
Date: 4th Nov 2025 @ 3:53pm
To begin our half term our focus is Room on the Broom. Over the last two days, we have enjoyed reading the story and discussing the key parts, characters and settings. Yesterday, we sequenced the key events of the story and retold it using key vocabulary and today we focused on writing short captions for characters speech and labelling characters and objects from the story. Over the next week, we will enjoy exploring the areas including themed motor skills tasks, maths tasks and telling stories in our story telling area.
Date: 17th Oct 2025 @ 12:11pm
This half term in Reading into Writing, Year 5 have been exploring biographies! We’ve enjoyed learning about the features of this text type and discovering how writers tell the stories of inspiring people. For our Hot Write, everyone wrote a biography about Bob Marley, showing off everything we’d learned about structuring information, using formal language, and celebrating someone’s achievements.
Date: 16th Oct 2025 @ 9:07am
To celebrate Black History Month, pupils in year 4 have written non-chronological reports about Viv Anderson - the first black person to represent the England senior national football team. Pupils enjoyed finding aout about Viv's early life - his parents were part of the Windrush Generation, who moved to England after World War 2. Here are a few examples of the children's writing.
Date: 13th Oct 2025 @ 5:19pm
This week we have been reading the story 'I want to be a Princess' by Stephanie Taylor. We learnt about Maya, who initially says she wants to be a princess, but then explains she wants to be like Princess Amina, a warrior princess who defended and ruled a kingdom. We then spent some time discussing with our teachers and peers what we would like to be when we grow up and our reasons why. We talked about lots of different careers, including doctors, teachers, ice cream sellers, police officers and builders.
Reception- Sensory Experience: Making Bread like Little Red Hen
Date: 10th Oct 2025 @ 6:18pm
This week some of the children in Reception have been exploring making bread.
They used all their senses to explore the ingredients and had fun feeling the flour, mixing in the water and mark making - we got very messy!
We were also learning to work alongside each other and focus our attention and concentrate during an activity.
Date: 7th Oct 2025 @ 6:34pm
Over this half term, we have been completing lots of tasks in our provision to practise our reading, writing, maths and oracy skills. We have retold stories, represented numbers, ordered numbers, practised number and letter formation and worked on fine motor skills, We have been working on completing these short tasks with increasing independence, to consolidate prior learning.
Date: 6th Oct 2025 @ 12:46pm
Today we held our first Spelling Bee of the year. Each house was represented by the best spellers from Year 2 - Year 6 and the children were tested on spellings they have been learning in Autumn 1. We are very proud of all the children for being their house representative and spelling some very tricky words in front of the whole school. The overall winners were Chepstow, who managed to spell 12/15 spellings across all 5 years groups.
Year 4 - BHM Non-Chronological Reports
Date: 6th Oct 2025 @ 10:25am
Pupils in year 4 have been learning how to write a non-chronological report. As this journey nears its conclusion, pupils have spent time editing and improving the draft of their final piece of writing. As October is Black History Month, we decided to write our reports about Viv Anderson, who was the first black person to represent England in a senior international football match.
Date: 2nd Oct 2025 @ 9:14am
This week we have begun our new writing journey of news articles. We have looked at a WAGOLL (what a good one looks like) and pulled out the features of the genre. We then looked at a range of articles and text marked them with the features we discussed the day before. By the end of the unit we will have written an artcle about the excape of Harriet Tubman, which will link with our work on Black History Month.
Date: 29th Sep 2025 @ 5:56pm
Today we read our new story, 'Handas Surprise.' We discussed the characters, the setting and the key events, before sequencing the story ourselves. We also accessed different related tasks in our provision, including retelling the story in our storytelling area, ordering numbers 1-10 and creating a fruit basket for Handa.
Date: 26th Sep 2025 @ 11:13am
The children in Reception have been busy learning our letter sounds. They have been taking part in their daily phonics lessons focusing of regonising graphemes, oral segmenting and blending CVC words hearning the initial sound. We have been practising forming our letters correctly and labeling pictures with the intial sound. Have a look at our learning!
Year 4 - Non Chronological Report - Shared Write
Date: 25th Sep 2025 @ 10:14am
Today, we completed a shared write about Black History Month, which is next month. We had to use our knowledge of the features of non-chronological reports to set out the information we were given correctly.
Year 1- School Council Elections
Date: 24th Sep 2025 @ 7:45am
This week, the whole School have been preparing manifesto's as to why they should represent the class as a member of the school council. As part of our Reading into Writing, we carefully thought about why we would be a good councillor and presented them to the class to encourage them to vote for us. On Thursday, we went into the hall and confidentially placed our votes for who we believed would be the best person to represent us.
Well done to our newly elected councillors!
Beech- Kevin
Hazel- Myla-Gray
Reception Learning to Write our Name
Date: 19th Sep 2025 @ 11:36am
In Reception we are focusing on recgonsing and writing our own names. The children have busy practising holding their pencil correctly and forming the letters . They have been working with an adult aswell and independently in the classroom areas. This ia really important skill- please help support your child at home. Your child may bring home their own name card to practise with. Please encourage them to do this regularly!
Date: 18th Sep 2025 @ 9:27am
In our first Oracy lesson, we explored the physical side of speaking and communication. We looked at how facial expressions, posture, voice projection, tonal variation, and pace of speech can change how we speak and how others understand us. It was a fun and lively session! We pulled funny faces in the mirror, practised breathing and humming exercises, and even recited Humpty Dumpty using different tones and speeds. It helped us understand that speaking clearly isn’t just about words—it’s also about how we use our bodies and voices. We can’t wait for the next session!
Date: 15th Sep 2025 @ 2:40pm
This week our story is 'The Gruffalo.' Today we have read and discussed the story, the characters and the setting, before completing Gruffalo related tasks in our provision. We have been writing captions, ordering numbers 1-10, retelling the story at our story telling table and matching number to quantity.
Date: 8th Sep 2025 @ 6:22pm
Year 1 have read and explored the story 'The Colour Monster' as their first text this half term. We have practised our oracy skills to discuss the characters, their emotions and how we can relate to each feeling. We have also been retelling the story in our story telling area, labelling the monsters/sentences about the different characters and completing lots of colour monster themed activities in our provision.
