English at Cotsford
Our school has adopted Pie Corbett’s Talk for Writing as a model to improve achievement in writing. There are three stages in ‘Talk for writing’ – imitate, innovate, invent. Movement from imitation to innovation to independent application can be adapted to suit needs of learners of any stage. The approach moves from dependence towards independence, with the teacher using shared and guided teaching to develop the ability in children to write creatively and powerfully.
Please click the link for English National Curriculum Information
Summer 2
English in EYFS
The children have really enjoyed writing about sea creatures including sharks, jellyfish, hermit crabs and starfish. They have found out lots of new facts about these amazing creatures.
English in Year 1
What a fantastic half term – Year 1 have thoroughly enjoyed learning the story of The Three Little Pigs and alternative versions of the story. They loved the version called ‘The Real Story of the Three Little Pigs’ By Jon Scieszka
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pF0h7NqpJQc
As you can see, they have created some fantastic pieces of work and thoroughly enjoyed taking on the challenge of becoming construction workers for the day to build the 3 little pigs new homes. This reinforced skills of joining materials previously leant in DT and encouraged evaluation skills as the houses were tested for strength and stability when the children tried to blow them down with hairdryers.
English in Year 2
Year 2 loved retelling ‘The Tale of a Toothbrush’ because of its many adventures. Their favourite part was when the toothbrush found its way back home and it was reused. Everyone realised at this point that humans are not kind to the Earth and that there is far too much rubbish. They were horrified to learn how much plastic is thrown in the sea each year and they began to look at ways of reducing this. Their enthusiasm to write their own persuasive text was phenomenal! Several wrote about air pollution, climate change, endangered animals and saving the land. They confidently used the ipads to research ideas; especially the hard-hitting numerical facts. They have all changed their attitude towards the environment. Eco-warriors in the making!
English in Year 3
This half term, the children have enjoyed a story about a talking papaya! They loved learning the story and even had the chance to role play the talking animals. The children then created their own story, with talking animals, fruit and vegetables!
English in Year 4
Year 4 have written some warning stories this half term. They used the model text, The Boat, to get some inspiration and they have worked very hard to improve the type of vocabulary they use in their stories. They created their own word banks and explored the correct language to use for suspense. You can enjoy reading some of our stories below:
English in Year 5
Year 5 have been working on perfecting their use of dialogue to advance action. They imagined that they had found a magical creature (just like Hetty in their model text) and incorporated their use of possessive apostrophes into the description. They have also been adding to their wide range of different sentence types and even adding colons and semi colons in! They really enjoyed writing narratives and particularly developing their character through show-not-tell.
English in Year 6
Year 6 have had a great half term focusing on developing their writing style through short bursts of writing. They have created some excellent pieces:
Summer 1
English in EYFS
Wow, Reception have had a fantastic half term exploring The Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. They have even completed their own stories including The Very Hungry Lion, The Very Hungry Lamb and The Very Hungry Starfish! I was amazed at some of the attempts of spelling using their phonic knowledge. Well done Reception.
English in Year 1
Traction Man to the rescue! – Year 1 have loved learning about ‘Traction Man’ by Mini Grey. They loved creating new outfits for Traction Man to help him during his adventures, creating villains and writing fact files for different characters.
English in Year 2
Year 2 have loved the class story this half term! Most of the class were excited to hear the hero was a girl whilst all were excited to write about an Ogress. Their enthusiasm for acting out a battle and being able to shout at each other during the battle was fun to watch! Their ideas for settings and characters have excelled in this story. They confidently used the ipads to research ideas; especially the gory details. The children debated in length what a hero would look, feel and act like. They realised that the princess from the story had it easier because she not only had lots of money to buy any weapons but also would be trained by the king’s guards. This sparked discussions into equality and how it isn’t always fair. The ogress in the story also didn’t think it was fair as she was killed in a variety of ways.
English in Year 3/4
Gods and Mortals has been a firm favourite this half term – the children loved learning all about how Perseus destroyed Medusa! Then they were able to choose their own mythical beast to put into their stories.
They also focused on a key question – Why do you need to kill Medusa? In this text, it became clear just how evil Medusa was and how killing her was justified. The children loved researching another mythical beast and creating their own explanation text.
English in Year 4
We’ve had some fantastic fantasy stories in Year 4. The children have focussed on developing their characters and writing dialogue correctly. As you can see in the pictures below, the children created short comic book strips in order to create conversations between their characters.
You can enjoy reading some of their stories below:
They also used the Jubilee film, which you can enjoy here,
to continue their character work. The children thought the film was really funny and they picked one of the main characters to describe, either the guard or the corgi. I like the way they used subordinate clauses and interesting vocabulary to describe each character.
English in Year 5
I have seen some fantastic descriptive writing in Year 5 this half term! The children combined a variety of different sentence structures with speech and created a truly spooky narrative for the animations Alma.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aw0uORumRts
English in Year 6
I am so proud of Year 6 – they have worked their socks off revising lots of aspects of spelling, punctuation and grammar in preparation for SATs. They have also been learning about active and passive voice and can identify this in sentences. The children have been writing in a range of genres to build up their Year 6 portfolio of writing. These genres include; writing a set of instructions, non-chronological reports, diary entries and a letter to The Queen celebrating her platinum jubilee.
Spring 2
English in EYFS
World Book Day started our celebration of literacy and books this half term. Everyone came to school dressed in pyjamas and listened to lots of different stories, including hearing a story with year 1 and year 2 in the hall!
The children have explored the story of The Enormous Turnip. They acted out the story in class which was so funny as they all had to tumble to the floor at the end! They have made their own stories with enormous fish, bones, meat and sweets to replace a turnip.
They have also planted cress this term and made a mini plant diary. They found out that cress grows very quickly!
English in Year 1
Our gripping tale for this half term was ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’. The children loved being the giant and saying ‘Fe Fi Fo Fum’. The children also enjoyed creating their own monsters and including these when writing their own version of Jack and the Beanstalk.
English in Year 2
Year 2 have enjoyed learning the Kapok Tree story with actions. They were so pleased the tree was saved and the man didn’t chop it down. The children really enjoyed taking on the character roles and being placed in the hot seat. They found being a kind animal fun, especially when they had to be persuasive. They had lots of discussions based around the Amazon rainforest and how they could try and protect it. The children created several story maps that they used to help them retell their own losing tale story, emphasising story language. They met some wonderful animals trying to save something special.
English in Year 3/4
This half term, the children have loved exploring different settings through their story – The Tin Forest. The story took them from a dull, tin town, to beautiful colourful surroundings. They enjoyed creating their own version of the story and added lots of descriptive language to bring their writing to life.
English in Year 4
Year 4 have been working very hard on their openings and endings this half term. They have used their class text, The Iron Man, their model text Nail Soup and the short film, Girl and Robot to write their own stories. You can enjoy reading some of their stories below. Also, the children have started to link their work on volcanoes in Geography, to newspaper reports. They have read a newspaper report called, ‘Peril in Pompeii!’ and examined the different features so that they can write their own newspaper report about the Iron Man entering the town.
World Book Day
Year 4 had a very busy day! It started with taking part in the BBC live lesson. Then, the children loved sharing their favourite story from home, which they used to create a book review display. They even had a visit from Miss Bartlett, who read her favourite story, The Little Mermaid. Finally, the children made bookmarks and played a game of Guess Who.
English in Year 5
The children have been working really hard on their descriptive writing, creating amazing sensory description and using wonderful new vocabulary. They have looked at ways of developing a plot using speech and making sure that their punctuation is perfect. They have also had a real drive to improve their handwriting and I think all of the class are impressed with their improvement. Their understanding of different sentence types has grown massively and they are much more confident with their writing across the curriculum. Here is their most recent work linked with their class text – The Giant’s Necklace – they had great fun writing about Cherry’s escape through a mine.
English in Year 6
Year 6 have loved focusing on the exciting time slip story this half term, The Gas Mask. It inspired them to write their own gripping versions of a time slip story which included some fantastic vocabulary.
Spring 1
English in EYFS
Guess which book we have loved this half term… “Trip, trap, trip, trap!” went the bridge… That’s right, Billy Goats Gruff has been a much-loved story for our reading enthusiasts. The children have really enjoyed focusing on traditional tales and attempted their first independent write. Mrs Laverick is very proud!
Author, Adam Bushell visited then too and they all had an amazing day telling lots of troll stories!
English in Year 1
“Grandmother, What big teeth you have!”… Another firm favourite for year 1. The children have had lots of fun reading their class story – Little Red Riding Hood. There are a lot of amazing actors in the class as we found out when they were creating freeze frames for their preferred part of the story: when the wolf pretends to be Grandma! They created some fantastic instructions with safety tips for Red Riding Hood to help her navigate the forest.
Adam Bushnell helped the class to plan a story about a big bad wolf and turned them into illustrators! They were enthralled by his visit especially when he was pulling funny faces as the big bad wolf spoke in his story!
English in Year 2
What a fantastic half term Year 2 have had! The children really enjoyed exploring the story of The Moon and the Stars. They had lots of discussions based around fantasy settings, who they would meet and what they would see.
They were also lucky enough to work with the famous author Adam Bushnell. He inspired them to design a spacecraft to take them into space and to protect them from the wonderful weird aliens they might meet. They finished their space writing by creating a diary entry for an astronaut.
English in Year 3/4
Year 3 love a gory text and this half term did not disappoint. They were engrossed by their chosen English texts! They had lots of fun creating instructions on how to mummify a body and took inspiration from their class novel ‘There’s a Pharaoh in my Bath’.
The second text was a time portal story, called The Time-Slip Scarab. They journeyed to Egypt with Emily and from this, created their own time portal story. The children then worked with the author, Adam Bushnell, to create their own version of Egyptian Gods, which they used in their own story.
English in Year 4
“When you reach the heart of the fire, all your illusions vanish.” Another fantastic story that has quickly become a firm favourite for Year 4 – they have loved reading ‘The Firework Makers Daughter’, by Philip Pullman. There were gasps and sighs every time they had to stop reading and wait for the next instalment. The children used this story and their model text, Lila and the Pirate to write their own suspense stories. They worked incredibly hard to choose appropriate vocabulary and make their writing more interesting with subordinate clauses and varied sentences. You can enjoy reading some of our stories here.
The children also had a fabulous morning with the author, Adam Bushnell. As you can see in the pictures, the children designed their own gladiators and created a short story all about their gladiators. The children even got the chance to try on some weapons! I think the helmets were their favourite as well as the story about gladiators selling their sweat.
English in Year 5
“Rattlesnakes would be a lot more dangerous if they didn’t have the rattle!” What an amazing quote from an amazing book – Holes, By Louis Sachar and the children have been truly inspired this half term. They have written some gripping newspaper articles full of suspense.
They too really enjoyed their time with the author Adam Bushnell – they went out on a fantastic outdoor adventure, using their senses to describe amazing environments and even invented their own Mexican monsters.
English in Year 6
The class text this half term definitely brought a tear to the eye and pulled on the heart strings. Year 6 loved reading War Horse by Michael Morpurgo so much that lots of the children bought other stories by the same author to read at home. They used their senses to describe characters including some excellent similes and metaphors.
Year 6 loved working with Adam Bushnell, (Real life Author) discussing and writing about WW1. They thoroughly enjoyed building forts and completing role play activities outside where they pretended to be in the trenches.
Autumn 2
English in EYFS
We have loved exploring our story this half term, ‘The Gingerbread man’ and learning the actions for some of our new vocabulary especially the action for ‘unfortunately’. We thoroughly enjoyed getting messy and making some gingerbread men and then writing some instructions to tell everone else how to make them – it was so much fun. We also had a visit from Santa’s elf called Nick and completed lots of tasks everyday including our Santa list!
English in Year 1
This half term, we have thoroughly enjoyed our class text, ‘Lila and the Secret of Rain’. We thought about Lila and how she felt and talked about our own wishes. We wrote sentences linked to the story and setting using nouns and adjectives, and tried very hard to include capital letters, full stops and finger spaces every time. We thought it was very funny when Sam got chased by a chicken!
We also enjoyed our non-fiction texts looking at diary entries from Lila and the cow in our story and wrote our own diary entry about ‘Our Snowy Day’.
English in Year 2
What a fantastic half term we have had in Year 2! The children really relished the Story of Pirate Tom. We had lots of discussions based around pirates, their treasure and the islands they may visit. The children created several story maps that they used to help them retell a story, emphasising story language. We met some wonderful and weird pirates trying to find a range of treasure from food to jewels. We finished our pirate work by having a pirate day, pretending to be the pirates from our wanted posters. We explored a report about dolphins. The children enjoyed researching an animal of their choice and creating a report…
English in Year 3/4
The children have been working with the gripping tale ‘ The Canal’ where the children learnt about what happens when the main characters ignore warnings and put themselves in danger. The children looked any actions and their consequences and created excellent warning stories of their own. They have worked really hard on learning new interesting vocabulary and tried to use some in their writing.
English in Year 4
We have written some marvellous information texts about rivers in Year 4. We started by visiting our local Dene to see our nearest river before using our Geography work to research major rivers around the world. The children picked one river to research and write about using sentence signposts and conjunctions. We all learnt some fascinating facts. The children also used our trip as inspiration to write a list poem using lots of description.
English in Year 5
In English, we have worked on our use of tense and how to create interesting atmosphere in our writing. We wrote some fantastic diary entries about our Magic Maths day, incorporating rhetorical questions and plenty of feelings and emotions. We also looked at different sentence structures and how subordinate clauses can make our writing so much more interesting. In our narrative writing, we looked at onomatopoeia and how short sentences can add to a spooky atmosphere!
English in Year 6
What an exciting half term! It all started with a magnificent trip around the North East where we had the opportunity to visit some of the local landmarks up close and personal including ‘Tommy’ at Seaham, Penshaw monument, The Millennium bridge, The Sage and The Angel of the North. This was the focus for the non-fiction writing. Year 6 studied the features of non-fiction texts and used facts from the road trip to write a recount of our visit.
Autumn 1
English in EYFS
EYFS have had an amazing half term! We have listened to a range of interesting stories and talked about likes and dislikes and our family and friends. We also loved learning the story of Mr Wiggle and Mr Waggle and enjoyed retelling the story to our friends. ‘Whatever Next’, ‘Jasper’s Beanstalk’ and ‘Come On Daisy’ were some of our favourite books that we have read in class. We have started to recognise and write some letters and practised writing our names. Mrs Laverick is incredibly proud of Reception, Keep up the hard work.
English in Year 1
In year 1 this half term, we have thoroughly enjoyed our class text, Sidney Spider. We listened to the story and learnt some super vocabulary. Using props, we retold the story in our groups and practised using expression during the retell. We thought about and discussed the spiders and how they felt in Mrs Brown’s shed and talked about how kind Susie and Stanley were to help Sidney hide from Mrs Brown’s broom. We labelled pictures and wrote captions linked to the characters and setting, and we wrote sentences to retell Sidney’s story. After that, we then changed some of our story to create our own version of Sidney Spider. As you can see, they are fantastic…
English in Year 2
What a fantastic half term we have had in Year 2! The children really enjoyed the story of The Smartest Giant in Town and empathised with the character. We had lots of discussions based around acts of kindness and which characters you could help on your journey. They were inspired and created several story maps that they used to help them retell a story, emphasising story language. We met some wonderful and weird creatures that needed a variety of support but luckily enough everyone had a happy ending.
The Clocktower film unit made us think about stopping town and how we would solve the girl’s problem. From this the children created a range of adjectives to describe not only the character but also the unusual settings. We finished the half term with a persuasive text. We explored the persuasion to ‘Get Rid of Giants’. The children strongly disagreed with this due to the kind nature of the giant in the story. Their challenge was to create their own persuasion to get rid of someone or something. Unfortunately, Mrs Simpson was one of the main targets! I wonder who will be next …
English in Year 3
Throughout Autumn half term, we have been focusing on the story ‘The Ground Gives Way’ – the children were fascinated by the way the characters lived and loved exploring the life of a caveman/ cavewoman. They enjoyed creating their own caveman/ cavewoman character for their stories and included some lovely descriptive vocabulary. The children also enjoyed our non-fiction discussion text, where they were able to argue points for and against living in just one room. We decided that we wouldn’t enjoy all living in one room together because it would be too noisy and crowded…and maybe a bit smelly!
English in Year 4
Year 4 have loved reading our core text, Queen of Darkness, by Tony Bradman. It has also enabled them to develop their understanding of the Roman period in Britain. We used this story to inspire us to write our own meeting stories in English, as you can read below.
We included some excellent descriptive vocabulary including noun phrases, adverbs and similes. We carefully thought about what mood we wanted to create and enjoyed playing around with a simple sentence to create positive and negative sentences such as, ‘The pretty girl sat on the comfy chair and stared at the delicate painting’ and ‘The cruel girl sat on the broken chair and stared at the ruined painting.’
English in Year 5
Class 5 have had such a busy half term in English. We have concentrated on a journey narrative, based on our reading book, Viking Boy and worked very hard on word classes and including different sentence types in our writing. We have also looked at persuasive texts and used their new skills to persuade people that their Viking God or Goddess was the most important. At the end of term, we were lucky enough to have a Zoom meeting with Tony Bradman, the author of Viking Boy – this was such a huge honour and we absolutely loved every minute of it!
English in Year 6
What a ‘spytastic’ half term we have had in Year 6. You guessed it – our topic was linked to spies and we absolutely loved it. We read the story Stormbreaker by Anthony Horowitz and linked this to the film clip ‘Pigeon impossible’ where the children worked on developing stories including spies with a range of different skillsets. We compared different famous spies including James Bond and Inspector Gadget focusing on the different unique tools that they had at their disposal. Eventually, we designed the perfect Spy and wrote a short story including our new characters. They were a delight to read.