Archived English Curriculum 2019-2020
Spring 1
In Early Years this term the children have continued to develop Talk 4 Writing by using The Three Little Pigs. They created story maps and used story language to retell a story. Then they changed the characters of the story as a class followed by creating individual maps and retelling their stories. They looked at how to write simple sentences including a capital letter, finger spaces and full stops and started writing sentences to match their story maps.
Year 1 have continued to explore Talk 4 Writing and learn a new oral story about Beegu the alien. They have rehearsed the actions for this so they could retell the story orally. They have also been working really hard on writing sentences correctly and including capital letters, full stops and finger spaces.
Year 2 children have thoroughly enjoyed learning how to write short stories linked to our class story ‘The Smartest Giant in Town’. The children created new versions of the story by changing the problem. They completed drama activities where they pretended to be the giant and identified how he was feeling at different points in the story.
This half term in Year 3 the children have enjoyed reading ‘The Awongaleema Tree’ and a selection of Greek myths. They have worked really hard at inventing their own stories and trying to create a mood, thinking about the effect they are trying to have on the reader. We have focussed on description, adjectives, expanded noun phrases and different types of adverbs.
This half term Year 4 read the class novel ‘How to Train your Dragon’ by Cressida Cowell. As part of this they read “Berk Road” a portal story, where a girl ends up in a Viking Village. The children focussed heavily on description of the setting, using similes and expanded noun phrases to make their writing interesting. They have also looked at non-fiction writing and wrote a persuasive text to persuade a character in ‘How to Train your Dragon’.
In English, Year 5 have used the Talk 4 Writing strategies, to learn the story ‘The Time-Slip Scarab’. They story mapped the plot and then performed the story using actions – this helped them remember the structure of the story. The children then developed their writing skills in a series of lessons, which focused on various skills needed in their writing. These skills were then a focus for our final independent piece.
Year 6 have read non-fiction texts such as a letter from the trenches, extracts of Anne Frank’s diary and a range of information texts about World War 2. The fiction unit has been based around a journey story, ‘Joey and the Shadow’, alongside Michael Morpurgo’s ‘War Horse’. Pupils have revisited how to use a range of coordinating and subordinating conjunctions as well as being able to identify main and subordinate clauses in texts. They have worked on using commas effectively in longer pieces of writing.
Autumn 2
In Early Years this term the children have developed their talk for writing by using The Gingerbread Man and Goldilocks and the Three Bears. They practised telling the story in small groups using actions. Then created story maps and began to use story language to retell a story. Next, they changed the characters and made individual maps to create new versions of the story. The children found working with a group more challenging. They can recognise and write most of the letters and have begun to use them in our everyday writing. They are blending words and now have home reading books.
This half term, Year 1 have started to look at narrative structure and used a text called ‘Little Jack’. The children have really enjoyed retelling the story orally and using actions in order to remember the structure. They are now working on retelling the story through writing and making little changes to the story so that they can write a new version of the story.
In year 2, the children have loved reading the story ‘Little Charlie’. They had lots of fun retelling the story using actions and performing the story in small groups. The children worked really hard to include key words including: once upon a time, next, but, so, luckily and unfortunately. Next, they created their own versions of the story by making little changes to the original version. They also started practicing using commas in lists. They thoroughly enjoyed doing this and created some excellent stories. Well done Year 2!
This half term in Year 3 the children have enjoyed reading ‘The Papaya that spoke’. They retold the story with their own actions and used it to create their own stories, for example, ‘The watermelon that spoke.’ They have focussed on spelling common exception words correctly, choosing appropriate and interesting vocabulary, varying story openers, using a range of conjunctions and using punctuation correctly.
The children have explored a story called “The Caravan” this half term. They have enjoyed investigating the characters, writing a diary entry, discussing the feelings map, identifying the story plot and creating their own versions of a warning story. There has been a specific focus on suffix spellings this half term and how to convert adjectives to adverbs. Within SPAG lessons, the children have focussed on fronted adverbials. By both identifying them and creating them. The children used collaborative learning techniques to share information as a group and taught each other what a fronted adverbial was and the different types they could use.
In English, Year 5 have used the Talk for Writing strategies, to learn the story ‘The Red Eye’ – a suspense story. They story mapped the plot and then performed the story using actions. The children then created small changes to the story before finally, creating their own version of a suspense story.
The children have focused on adverbs and modal verbs this half term and have attempted to use these within their writing.
Year 5 have also looked at persuasive texts. They identified the features within a model text, then used these to build their own version, based on their topic ‘Alchemy Island’.
This term, Year 6 have read a range of texts such as a warning story, non-fiction leaflets and brochures about Mexico. They have also read the novel Holes by Louis Sachar and have made inferences and predictions based on these texts.
This term the GPS coverage was nouns. Pupils have learned to recognise many types of nouns such as; common, proper, abstract and collective and can confidently identify these and use noun phrases in sentences.
In writing this term, we have used Talk for Writing strategies to plan and write a warning story. We have also produced persuasive texts based on Mexico and used the same planning techniques to write about the novel Holes.
Autumn 1
In Early Years this term we have listened to a range of stories and talked about our likes and dislikes. We have listened to stories about friendship including Aesop’s Fable the Lion and The Mouse, Bucketful of Happiness and Lost and Found by Oliver Jeffers. We have started to recognise and write letters. We are beginning to blend words verbally. We have labelled our work using a name card. We are learning the importance of listening to others and responding appropriately.
Our Year 1 children have enjoyed writing lists and instructions as part of our ‘Enchanted Woodland’ topic. We went on a woodland walk around the school grounds to collect woodland materials and the children wrote a list of the things we found.
We also read ‘The Town Mouse and The Country Mouse’, wrote a letter to Toby Town Mouse and finally a set of instructions for how to make him a jam sandwich.
The children in year 2 have had great fun this half term learning about different minibeasts during our ‘Wiggle and Crawl’ topic.
We had a visitor from ‘Animal story’ who brought a range of different minibeasts – the children had first-hand experience handling different minibeasts which really helped with their writing.
Then we looked at the book ‘Mad about minibeasts’ where the children created some fantastic poetry with rhyming words.
Year 3 enjoyed writing recounts about our visit from ‘Animal story’ and sharing the new animal facts that they had learnt in leaflets. The children relished the challenge of creating a haiku poem about predators. We finished our Predator topic by writing a dilemma story set in the Everglades National Park.
Year 4 enjoyed creating fact files and explanation texts about teeth. They enjoyed looking at idioms and how they could be used within the explanation context. They enjoyed look at the journey story “The tunnel” by Anthony Browne. They were able to create their own characters and are beginning to develop their story writing.
In English, Year 5 have completed non-chronological reports about a particular minibeast, which involved lots of research. They then explored adverts and how to catch the reader’s attention (or in our case, the minibeast’s attention for a minibeast hotel). The children then began to plot story ideas and created a minibeast comic strip. Year 5 also explored kenning and limerick poetry and created their own versions, linked to minibeasts. Finally, they briefly looked at suspense narratives and after watching the video Alma, created a re-tell of the spooky story for an assessment piece.
Year 6 have enjoyed producing writing around our topic ‘Blood Heart’. They have written non-chronological reports which explain the function of the heart and the circulatory system. As well as creating shape poems about the heart and an informative biography based on William Harvey.