What an absolutely AMAZING day it has been through school today to celebrate World Book Day. The school has had such a buzz of excitment all day as we have engaged in lots of exciting tasks to mark the special occasion!
It all began at the beginning of the week with books being hidden around school for children to find and keep. The children have loved hunting for books and this has created a real aura of excitement. The children were then invited to mark the day by dressing as their favourite book characters. It was lovely to see so many fantastic outfits; from Alice in Wonderland, to Romans and even Willy Wonka! In the morning we spent time discussing what World Book Day is and why we celebrate it. As classes, we then reflected on books that meant the world to us. We created our own "Writes of Passages" which explained why our books were so important. These were lovely to read and will make a beautiful display in our library area in the coming weeks. 
Children from Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 were given the task of creating their own Supervillain this year. Each class had to create and describe their own villain and ensure he committed a terrible crime against books. The outcomes of these were fabulous, for example, Sammy Slick the International Word Scrambler was a villain I certainly didn't want to come into contact with!
Children also linked their Maths and SPAG knowledge to World Book Day to escape the Library. Using their Maths and SPAG skills, children had to solve clues to reveal the combination code to escape the library. I certainly heard Team JD screaming at the fact they were locked in! Luckily, they all escaped by the end of the day!
In addition to this, all class teachers were asked to fetch in an object from home. Then, starting in Year 1, Mr Holmes and his class had to use their object to write the beginning of a story. This was emailed to the next class who used their object to add on additional sections of the story and so on. The outcome of the whole school story was simply hilarious. The title could not sum up the outcome any better - The most random, unpredictable story of the year!
It has been a truly fantastic day and the children have loved marking the occasion! We are already busy planning for next year's fun!

In our reading work, pupils have read a wide selection of non-fiction including biographies, information texts linked to natural disasters, historical sources, information texts and web pages linking to our RE topic on Buddhism. We have been equally enthralled by the fiction texts we have read including: a range of modern and historical narratives by authors such as George Layton, Emma Carroll and Derek Landy. We explored Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky poem and read, learnt and performed a selection of Christmas poetry – which we recorded for our Christmas performance. We continue to work on our VIPER skills but have had a more detailed focus on inference reading comprehension questions around characters and their emotions and also questions requiring more detailed comparison description.

Team LF have read Dracula, written by Bram Stoker, during our reading lessons this term. We have focussed on the vocabulary used within the text in order to support our understanding of the novel. The story also lent itself well to other VIPERS elements, allowing us to work on retrieval, prediction and inference. We have used stem sentence responses to support with the structure of our answers and become more familiar with the point, evidence, point evidence (PEPE) technique. We also briefly touched on summarising and this is something we will be continuing with at other points in the year. As part of our GASP approach to writing, we have also engaged in the reading on non-fiction texts (such as newspapers) to develop our understanding of different text types and support us with the analysis of features.  

In reading, Team JD have worked really hard to analyse fiction texts. We have linked our reading to our topic of Wombwell and Whitby and used the fictional text of Bram Stoker’s Dracula to support our understanding of the coastal town of Whitby. Vocabulary, retrieval and prediction have been our key VIPERS focus throughout this half term. As a class, we have spent time every week analysing Dracula and other similar readings. Using images and actions, we have developed an understanding of unfamiliar words, allowing children to explain the meaning of new vocabulary and then being able to use these in our writing. We have then built upon our fluency skills through echo reading sessions led by Mr Davison. Team JD have improved their fluency and confidence in reading their work aloud to an audience. We have continued to work on comprehension questions in which the children have developed a clear procedure for scanning and locating information, reading the question and ultimately creating a successful response.
 

In reading, Team CB have continued to explore non-fiction texts linked to our topic of Mountains and Rivers. We have focussed upon the technical, subject specific language to develop our understanding of key terms and concepts across the curriculum. In addition to non fiction texts we also studied the poem A River’s journey by Angela Yardy which combined the true account of a rivers journey with features of personification throughout. These texts were fantastic for VIPERS based learning linked to vocabulary. We have also started to explore inference this half term. This was introduced through image stimulus to begin with to support the children in recognising the need for their own thoughts plus evidence from the stimulus in order to successfully inference. The class then worked hard to apply their views into a written response with sentence stems generated from the questions posed. 

In reading, Team AC's year 3s have been working closely with Team CB , where they have continued to explore non-fiction texts linked to our topic of Mountains and Rivers. We have focussed upon the technical, subject specific language to develop our understanding of key terms and concepts across the curriculum. In addition to non fiction texts we also studied the poem A River’s journey by Angela Yardy which combined the true account of a rivers journey with features of personification throughout. These texts were fantastic for VIPERS based learning linked to vocabulary. We have also started to explore inference this half term. This was introduced through image stimulus to begin with to support the children in recognising the need for their own thoughts plus evidence from the stimulus in order to successfully inference. The class then worked hard to apply their views into a written response with sentence stems generated from the questions posed. Our year 2s have continued to develop their phonics knowledge through the RWI programme of study. They have worked hard to secure their knowledge of the different sounds which has allowed them to read with greater accuracy and become much more fluent with their reading. 

This half term Team CH have been incredibly busy working hard on their reading skills. The class have been working hard to follow the Read Write Inc programme to support children to become confident and independent readers and writers. We have worked hard to learn different phonemes, digraphs and split digraphs followed by Fred Talk and reading words with the support of Fred the frog. ​

​In reading this half term, Team EO have continued to have a heavy focus on phonics - learning to read the letters by saying the correct sound. Children have spent time consolidating previously taught sounds and learning new sounds in their groups. We have spent time learning to read green word cards by doing ‘Fred Talk, Read the Word’, ‘Fred in Your Head’ and then reading the words speedily in our phonics groups. Some of us have also been trying to read tricky red words and high frequency words! Our core book this half term has been ‘Zog’, which we have enjoyed listening to over and over again. This has enabled us to join in with repeated phrases throughout the book.  We have also picked out vocabulary that was unfamiliar to us and we have discussed what these words mean.