The children in nursery have loved our theme of Magical Storyland over the last few weeks. Each week we have focused our learning around a different traditional or fairy story and have shared lots of different versions of them to inspire the children's interests. Our books have included: Little Red Riding Hood, The Little Red Hen, The Three Little Pigs, The Three Billy Goats Gruff and Goldilocks and the Three Bears. 
The children have learnt to change their voices for the different characters and join in with the repeated refrains. In the provision, they have had lots of opportunities to role play the stories with their friends using puppets and props linked to each book. We love telling stories in nursery! 

​During the Spring Term, Team CT have been busy reading the whole class text The Owl Who’s Afraid of the Dark. This text was chosen as it provided high levels of challenge around vocabulary choice and enables children to use their common knowledge to develop links with familiar subjects to hang new vocabulary on. The text also provided opportunities for being more specific with word choices and understanding authorial intent. From this text, the class worked on applying all of their VIPERS skills in preparation for the upcoming Key Stage 1 SATs testing.

In the Spring term, Team LG began a new novel linked to their World War One topic. They have studied Michael Morpurgo’s ‘Private Peaceful’. Set in the First World War, the book reflects on a young boy's life from the trenches. The class were taken back to Tommo's first day at school and analysed his feelings towards this using Point, Evidence, Explanation (PEE). This enabled them to consolidate skills they had drawn upon in the first term, focussing more on ensuring the explanation is not a repeat of the point. As they continued to read they discussed the pressures that some families faced when the First World War was taking place and how they had to adhere to the rules set by the Colonel. Alongside reading, the class listened to the audio version of the book which really brought the characters and the story to life. 

Today in Nursery and Reception, we have had an exciting day celebrating our love of stories. All the children and staff were invited to come to school in their pyjamas and bring a teddy and their favourite bedtime story book. Throughout the day we snuggled up under a blanket with our teddy and shared our favourite stories by torch light, Miss McGinnes' favourite story is Tiddler by Julia Donaldson and she enjoyed reading this to all classes during the day. At the end of the day we drank hot chocolate and ate cookies while listening to different bedtime stories. 
We love stories in Early Years!  What is your favourite story? 

In the Spring Term, Team CB have taken on a new reading challenge and have invested in reading How to Train your Dragon by Cressida Cowell. This is linked with their current History topic of Anglo Saxons and Vikings. In class they  have used the book in a variety of ways, in particular, refining their understanding of complex and varied vocabulary structures, forming the basis of explanation based answers using a P.E.E framework and beginning to summarise key points within a paragraph, page and chapter. 

Wow! We are so impressed with the progress that all the children in Reception are making in their reading! 

Thank you to all the parents and carers for your support with reading at home. Please remember, reading books are changed on Mondays and Thursdays, please remind your child to place their book bag in the box. We encourage children to read for a few moments each day. Remember they will be using their phonics to sound out the words in the book- they are all getting great at this now! 

Library books are changed on Fridays. Please read and re-read these books with your child as this will really help with their reading fluency and understanding of stories and story language. 

During the Spring term, the children in Team GG have been focusing on the non fiction texts linked to the history topic of the Stone Age and Iron Age.  They have been developing their skill of historical vocabulary in order for them to understand the text they are reading.  Through the discussion of the texts, the children could then continue to develop their comprehension skills linked to the VIPERS, particularly the retrieval, inference and summarising. The class have also started to read a shorter version of the fictional text Peter Rabbit.  Through the use of echo reading, the children have been working on their continued skills of fluency and intonation. From using the familiar text, the children will continue to work on their inference, vocabulary and explanation.  

The children in Team CC are really enjoying 'Mystery Reader' at the moment. Different adults from school and home have been visiting their class at story time to read their favourite story to the children. This is really helping to nurture the children's love of reading and modelling to them that EVERYONE  can read for pleasure! 
If any more parents, grandparents or carers would like to be the mystery reader, please get in touch with Miss Clementson. The children would love to see you.