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English at YWJS

English Statement of Intent

Resilient Respectful Inspired Curious

Readers, Writers and Speakers at Yeadon Westfield Junior School

We teach English at YWJS to empower children to be successful in every aspect of school life, by giving them the skills to read comprehensively, speak confidently and write creatively. We want our children to succeed in life and recognise that excellent language skills open the doors to great opportunities.

The overarching aim for English in the national curriculum is to promote high standards of language and literacy by equipping pupils with a strong command of the spoken and written word, and to develop their love of literature through widespread reading for enjoyment.

Readers

The children at YWJS will have excellent comprehension and de-coding skills. As readers, they will be confident, fluent and expressive and will read a variety of texts allowing them to deepen their understanding of the world and connect with the books they are reading. We want to inspire our children to become life-long lovers of reading and make informed choices about the texts they read, while being curious about new authors and appreciate our rich and varied literary heritage. We want our children to be prepared and have the reading skills they need to be successful throughout their life.

Writers

When our children leave YWJS, they will write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their style and language in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences. Children will have the spelling, punctuation and grammar skills they need to be successful and resilient writers who can confidently express, elaborate and explain themselves in a variety of different genres.

Speakers

Our children will be confident speakers and listeners, who can debate, present, question and clarify and have embedded oracy skills which allow them to contribute respectfully to discussion.

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We really love reading! Click here to find out more....

Summer Term 2024 - Year 4I - Reading With Sounds

4I had a visitor who explained how the British Library operates. She then read from a book with the pupils adding sound effects which they had created.

Summer Term 2024 - Year 4I - Class Debate

Our debate was whether McDonalds should build a new supersized eatery on Nunroyd park or not! This links to our English topic and the eco schools topic. Speaking in public - and listening - are difficult skills and the children do well here.

Summer Term 2024 - Year 5 - Imaginative Writing

We are writing a journey story featuring woodland animals told from the perspective of the animals – like our class story ‘The Animals of Farthing Wood’. To truly immerse ourselves in their environment and habitats, we imitated different animal movements whilst journeying around the school grounds. On the way we had to cross various obstacles such as a hunters net, a river, fire, and even roads, trying to dodge the cars!

Summer Term 2024 - Year 5 - Write Like A Poet

Year 5 had a visitor from the British library for a workshop 'Write like a poet'. We learnt all about the British Library and how it is run. We explored poetry and the use of similes. We also enjoyed a few different word games to get our brains working.

Year 6 took part in an exciting workshop led by The British Library on graphic novels. We looked at the beautiful book, Azzi In Between by Sarah Garland. The children created freeze frames connected to the story.

The name game

Freeze frame

Freeze fame

Freeze frame

Spring Term 2024 - Visit of Jenny York

Local author Jennie York visited inspired all the school in their creative writing by telling them her latest publication called Nuts.

Meeting Sven the longboat maker!

The children in Year 6 met Sven, a Viking longboat maker, who lived in the same village as Gunner (the main character in their class text Viking Boy by Tony Bradman). He told them of the attack by Skuli and his band of raiders and read them a letter his daughter had written to the neighbouring village, warning them of the attack. The children took part in some 'show, not tell' emotion activities and Sven challenged them to write their own account of the attack in the village to send to their friends to warn them.

Meeting Peggy Whitson!

The Year 6 children met Peggy Whitson, an astronaut from the USA. She explained that a new rocket, the Titan V was going to be sent into space to see if there is intelligent life out in the solar system. She challenged the children to create information leaflets about North America to send up with the rocket so any intelligent life could learn about the continent.

Spring Term 2024 - Year 4 - Creative Writing

We are pretending to go on an expedition in the hall climbing over obstacles and hills/mountains as Jordan Romero would have done when he became the youngest person to climb the seven summits. We wore backpacks for effect! This to stimulate our creative writing.

Spring Term 2024 - Year 4 - The Maya

As part of their Maya topic 4I mimed what it would be like moving through the jungle. Here are some of their mimes. But what are they up to?

Autumn Term 2023 - English hook lesson

The children were introduced to our new topic in English through a 'hook' lesson. The children made 'potions' which they will later be writing up as an instruction text. They had lots of fun coming up with alliterated adjectives to describe their potions plus onomatopoeia words to describe the sounds made.

Summer Term 2023 - Year 4 - A Class Debate

Year 4 had a debate about whether we should or should not build a MacDonald's on Nunroyd Park.

Summer Term 2023 - Year 6 - A HOOK activity on our MPD

We spent the day in two types of activity -
1. Observing and collecting data about the natural world
2. Designing and building desert islands in response to messages in bottles from Robinson Crusoe.
The second activity was a 'hook' to help us develop our creative writing skills - we found two bottles hidden in the school grounds with a hidden message in them. The message was an extract from Robinson Crusoe about him being stranded on a desert island. We then designed and made our own desert islands.

Spring Term 2023 - Year 4 - Biographies

Year 4 are learning to write a biography. They are using the life of Jordan Romero as a "hook" for their writing. They tried some "mountain climbing" in their PE lesson to give them an idea off what climbing feels like.

Spring Term 2023 - Year 4 - English on our Muddy Puddle Day

We used this Muddy Puddle Day to create and perform stories linked to the Maya. We also combined our maths with art to create geometrical artwork. We went indoors to make some Mayan style wraps and enhance our food preparation skills. Back outside we cooked and ate the wraps round the fire pit, learning more Health and Safety skills.
We warmed up playing Pok-a-Tok. This is a ball game where you can't use your hands or feet to move the ball. Challenging but fun.

Spring Term 2023 - Year 6 Hook

As part of the Horrible Histories event in the hall, the Year 6 children met Sven, a Viking longboat maker who taught the children all about longboats and life as a Viking. Sven encouraged the children to take part in 'show not tell' activities where the children had to act out certain emotions and their partner had to guess what the emotion was from their facial expressions and body language. The children used this information to help them to write a historical story imagining they were Vikings.

Autumn Term 2022 - Year 6 hook activity for biographies. The children had to gather images from the life of Captain Tom Moore and then arrange them into a timeline of his life.

Autumn Term 2022 - Year 4 - Writing Instructions

We made some potions during our study of Romans to stimulate our instruction writing skills.

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Summer Term 2022 - Year 5 - Library Visit

We walked along to Guiseley Library. The librarian explained how it works. You can borrow up to 20 books at a time for up to 3 weeks. You can return them to any library in Leeds. And it's all FREE!

Summer Term 2022 - Year 6 - Creative Writing - The Hook

Our Creative Writing topic is Castaways. To 'hook' us into the topic we read part of Robinson Crusoe and then built our own islands using string and found materials.

Spring Term 2022 - Class 4I - Performance Poetry

We have been practising performing poems after watching Michael Rosen's 'Chocolate cake' performance. This is part of our English topic of free verse, narrative poetry linked to our class English book, 'You wouldn't want to be a Mayan soothsayer!' which then links to our History topic, the 'The Mysterious Maya.'

Spring Term 2022 - Year 6 - Pompeii, A 'Hook' Activity

All Year 6 pupils watched a simulation of the destruction of Pompeii by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. They used this as a ‘hook’ to stimulate their creativity. In small groups they wrote and videoed a news report of the events on that day. There are two pieces of work in this video. The work of all the pupils can be viewed in the Video Resource Centre which is found in the Children menu from the Home Page.

Spring Term 2022 - The Big Write after The Hook

After being "Hooked" into thinking about creative writing, the children eventually produced their final, inspired, "Big Writes". Here are some examples from across the whole school. Remember you can pause the video to read any of the work more carefully.

Spring Term 2022 - Year 3 - Escape From Pompeii

The class reader for this term is “Escape From Pompeii’ by Christina Balit. We read the book, watched a time lapse reconstruction of the day, and finally created freeze frames for each part of the day.

Spring Term 2022 - Year 3 - Volcano Hook

We will be writing poems about volcanoes. To inspire us we built and then erupted our own.

Spring Term 2022 - Year 4 - Jordan Romero

We read Jordan Romero's biography. We used it as inspiration to write our own expedition plans.

Spring Term 2022 - Year 4 - Using a Thesaurus

We used a thesaurus to find suitable synonyms to use in our instructions for making magic potions.

Spring Term 2022 - Year 6 - Viking Hook

Year 6 went down to Esholt Woods to seek inspiration for their Scary Viking stories.

Autumn Term 2021 - Reading Across The Year Groups

This video shows which books the children have been reading, and also how they have used what they have read in other creative activities.

Autumn Term 2021 - Year 6 - Hook activity for writing historical stories.

Year 6 have used their Muddy Puddle/World War II/Outdoor Learning to stimulate their creative writing.

Autumn Term 2021 - Year 5 - Hook activity for writing space poems

As our hook for English this term, we spent a whole day exploring Space as the stimulus for our upcoming Space Poetry unit. Whilst we are studying Earth & Space in Science this half term, we focused on thinking about how fascinating Space is and immersing ourselves in the language of Space. We wrote the questions that we wonder about on stars. Our artwork for the day saw us look out of the window of our rockets and draw the view. We started to think about expeditions to Mars and did research on the Mars Rovers (which also ties in with our DT work). Finally, we read more from our class reader with a Space theme ‘Cosmic’ by Frank Cottrell Boyce and ‘Curiosity - the story of a Mars Rover’.

Autumn Term 2021 - Year 4 - Hook activity for writing instructions

The children brought in various edible ingredients for a 'potion' and made their 'potion' while listening to George's Marvellous Medicine.
The children will be writing about their own marvellous medicine and also writing escape instructions to leave for any slaves locked in their cell. This is linked to the topic on Romans.

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Summer Term 2021 - Year 4I - Debating

Class 4I have been honing up their debating skills. An (invented) scheme was put to them that a fast-food outlet wanted to build a 200 seater restaurant and takeaway on Nunroyd Park. The pupils looked at the positive and negative aspects of this scheme, and then held a class debate.

Summer Term 2021 - Year 6 Adventure Writing

After reading Robinson Crusoe and Kenuke's Kingdom we have been designing our own desert islands.

Spring 2021 - Year 6 Creative Writing - Kennings

Kennings are like riddles. They describe something without ever saying what it is.
There are a lot of Kennings in this video. You may wish to use the pause button to spend more time looking at the work of different pupils.

Spring 2021 - Year 6 - Creative Writing 1

There are 2 videos - one of material by pupils learning at home and one by children working in school. Remember to use the pause button if the video is moving too quickly.