Masters of Reading
Did you know that we are the only school in the North East working on the trailblazing pilot of the Mastery in Reading programme? Tomorrow (Tuesday), Mr. Howe will be travelling to Sheffield to meet once again with the Yorkshire pioneer primary schools and feed back on how well we are doing and how the project can move forward. We decided to become part of the scheme as reading is definitely an area we need to improve. Whilst we had wonderful phonics results in Year 1 in 2016, there is scope for much development at Key Stages 1 and 2. Our results may be in-line or slightly better than reading results nationally but we want to be the best and to do so needs a rigorous approach. Years 4, 5 and 6 are all spending at least an hour a day exploring their books, the language within those books and what the author is trying to imply rather than say outright. Through the book ,grammar and writing skills are being taught and when I spent an hour in the Year 4 class last week observing the lesson, I was very impressed with the amount of high quality work in the children's exercise books.
Meanwhile, all our parents can help us by listening to children every single day, exploring new words, collecting words for children to use in writing and introducing children to new authors.
We are also redesigning the library so that children have more guidance when choosing fiction books to take home and there are some gorgeous, fascinating and challenging books to devour. Let's all be advocates of reading!
Groundforce Day
It's that time of year when our vegetable beds and flower pots need a good clean out so Friday this week is the nominated day. Garden gloves at the ready-there's nothing more satisfying than working with earth.
National Poetry Day
On Thursday we host our exciting and highly competitive 3rd poetry recital competition. From Reception to Year 6, the entrants are always very brave and determined to stand up before a critical audience and judges to do their very best. Also on Thursday we will be presenting the cup for the Ivan Jones Amazing Poem Award. Ivan and Mal have looked at the poems in depth and given some fabulous feedback for 10 of the poets. And just to sign off today here's one of Ivan's poems for you all:
HIGH RISE LIVING
I live in a block of flats
You can see for miles
The motorway smiles
And stretches like a cat
Our flat is at the top
The lift sighs as it rises -
It's full of surprises -
'Till it reaches our stop
We have window boxes
With ivies and flowers -
Flowers in the towers
Birds and no foxes
When we go out to play
We have to descend
Drives you round the bend
All that way every day
But at night what a sight!
Pink and red and orange light
Then whiteness of moonlight
Sleep tight at this height.
by Ivan Jones (c)