English

What we say about English at Dean Bank Primary School

Jessica – I like to learn and understand new things like subordinate clauses.
Mia – I enjoy listening to different stories and like to write in different ways to express my feelings.
Riley – Learning new words is fun!

Our Intent

At Dean Bank Primary School, we believe that reading, writing and spoken communication are key life skills that every child should develop so they are prepared for the next steps in their learning. We use the English curriculum (using cross curricular links where appropriate) to develop the skills, knowledge and understanding that will enable our pupils to communicate effectively and creatively in spoken and written forms. We strive for our pupils to develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information; acquire a wide vocabulary; develop a secure understanding of English grammar and punctuation; and acquire a knowledge of linguistic conventions for reading, writing and spoken language.
English long term planning has been evaluated and changed to include a wide range of texts to support social and ethical issues, understanding of specific authors, a range of cultures, language and vocabulary development and appreciation of classic texts.
We aim for our pupils to develop mastery of the curriculum content for their year group and be confident enough to be able to apply the skills taught in English lessons in their other subjects. We strive for children to become more independent writers who develop confidence with the editing and redrafting process and can use self and peer assessment to reflect on their own and others’ writing.

Planning

You can view the long term plans for English to see what is taught in each each year group here.

Whole School English Texts Long Term Plans

Poetry LTP 2021-22

Reading and Phonics

For more information regarding Reading and Phonics please click here.

English in Action at Dean Bank

May 2022: Y4 Persuasive Letters

Summer term work in Reception

This term, reception class have worked on 2 aspects of writing. Firstly, the children have been encouraged to use their phonics knowledge and skills to write with greater independence. As a result, they have developed confidence in their own ability. Secondly, reception class have been developing their writing skills and ability by learning about the different ways we can structure words. This has included writing simple sentences, descriptive sentences as well as writing lists. English work has been linked to focus stories and tasks, therefore the children have wrote about the Queen as part of our jubilee celebrations as well as the stories of The 3 Billy Goats Gruff and Aliens Love Underpants. This has also helped in supporting and consolidating children’s knowledge and understanding on these topics/stories.

June 2022: Reading Plus

Year 5 have been trialling a new website called ‘Reading Plus’ and they have been thoroughly enjoying reading the different texts and trying to improve their reading speed and comprehension scores. Almost all of the children have already earned their first certificate. Huge congratulations to Hope who was the first person in the class to read over 50,000 words. Keep it up, Y5!

June 2022: The Three Billy Goats Gruff in EYFS

The children in EYFS enjoyed reading the Three Billy Goats Gruff. They had fun acting out the story to help them to remember it, making their own bridges as well as learning about different sizes and vocabulary (big/large, medium, small/tiny) and making comparisons of size (biggest/smallest, shortest/tallest, etc).

May 2022: KS2 Parent Reading Workshops

In May, each of the KS2 classes had a parent reading workshop to support parents with reading with their children at home.

March 2022: Shakespeare at Bishop Auckland Town Hall

Some of Year 5 and 6 performed as part of a Shakespeare festival at Bishop Auckland Town Hall. They have been working incredibly hard to learn their lines and make sure that they understood the complicated play ‘Much Ado About Nothing’.

It must have been very scary for them all to perform in front of such a large audience but they all rose to the challenge and were absolute stars!

Thank you very much to all of the parents and carers who came along to show their support and also for everyone who has helped the children learn their lines at home and shown encouragement.

March 2022: Reading Workshops

Each class invited parents and carers into school for a reading workshop.

The adults had a school dinner with their children and then took part in some reading activities to learn more about how reading works in school.

March 2022: World Book Day

For World Book Day, we held a book exchange, where children could swap a pre-loved book for another of their choice and the children took part in paired reading with different year groups. We also dressed up as our favourite book characters and children completed lots of other activities linked to books.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

February 2022: Storytelling Week

Year 5 enjoyed writing their own stories during Storytelling Week, taking inspiration from a range of stories that they read.

heir target audience was KS1 pupils so once they were finished, they visited Year 1 to share their stories.

They got some great reviews!
“I give it 1000 out of 10!”
“I really loved the story and want to listen again”
“It was 100,000 out of ten!”

January 2022: Shakespeare Project in Y5 and 6

Did you know that our school is a RSC (Royal Shakespeare Company) Associate School? Our teachers get training from RSC staff and each year we work on a new play. Children in years 5 and 6 are currently working on Much Ado About Nothing for this year’s project.

The children began by playing some games and warm ups to help them work together as a team and build their confidence. Then they moved onto learning about the story of the play. We will be working towards a performance at Bishop Auckland Town Hall later in the spring term.

December 2021: Poetry in Y5

Year 5 enjoyed exploring The Highwayman and The Listeners in December. They found a lot of similarities between the two poems and completed writing tasks based on each poem. They produced some fantastic description to describe the setting of The Listeners.

December 2021: Nursery

Our nursery children have been working on recognising their names and they have also been exploring a range of books by different authors.

December 2021: Reception phonics and guided reading

In our Reception class, the children have been continuing with their phonics development using Sounds-Write and they have also been exploring books with adults in guided reading.

December 2021: Y1 story telling

Here are some examples of writing from Year 1. They are trying very hard to use their phonics knowledge to spell words.

November 2021: Y2 Sounds-Write

Y2 are really enjoying their phonics sessions using Sounds-Write.

They are always very enthusiastic and keen to join with all of the activities.

Well done Y2! I’m sure you are going to make excellent progress this year.

November 2021: Y3 letter writing

Year 3 explored the features of a formal letter and then wrote formal letters of complaint.

November 2021: Y5 Writing Awards

Well done to our talented writers from Y5 who have been chosen by Young Writers to have their poems published in a book.

They all wrote poems about themselves for the theme of ‘This Is Me’ and their poems will now feature in a book. I’m very proud of all of you!

November 2021: Y5 and 6 author chat

It was a brilliant opportunity for Year 5 and 6 to read some of Thomas Taylor’s books and then to be able to send him questions to answer on a video meeting.

Rebecca, “It was so exciting when he said my name and answered my question!”

Hope, “I loved hearing about life as an author.”

October/ November 2021: Year 5 and 6 performing playscripts

Year 5 and 6 have both covered play scripts this term and they enjoyed performing play scripts, examining the features and then writing play scripts based on their class novels.

Sept 2021: Y5 and 6 – International Literacy Day

The children in years 5 and 6 thought about why literacy is important as part of International Literacy Day and made acrostic poems using our ideas.

Sept 2021: Y2 – Beegu role play

Year 2 are reading a great book in English called Beegu, which is about a lonely creature who lands on Earth and wants to make some friends. They used role play to help them to imagine how Beegu and the other characters might feel.

2020-2021

Y1 English carousel – Oct 2020

Y1 have been taking part in an English carousel with different reading and writing activities.

The Enormous Turnip – Oct 2020

Y2’s new class story is The Enormous Turnip.

This week they have been learning about verbs.

To help the children understand what they are they’ve been using role play to act out some of the powerful verbs they’ve found in the story.

National Poetry Day – Oct 2020

For National Poetry Day, each class spent some time exploring a new poem and creating their own poems.

Y6 worked on the poem ‘What is pink?’ by discussing the poem and playing a game to describe objects and guess what other children were describing.

Next, they created their own poems based on colours and produced some fantastic work.

Roald Dahl Day – Sep 2020

For Roald Dahl Day, each class completed activities linked to one or more of Roald Dahl’s books.

The children were also invited to dress up as a Roald Dahl character or wear yellow because that was Roald Dahl’s favourite colour!

Exploring Beegu in Y2 – Sep 2020

Year 2 are enjoying their new class book which is Beegu by Alexis Deacon.

They had great fun creating freeze frames of the story.

Y1 Continuous provision – Sep 2020

Our Y1 pupils are settling in well to Y1 and enjoying accessing reading and writing within their continuous provision.

Some of the children enjoyed looking through Elmer in their castle.