Drawing Club

Drawing Club is a wonderfully innovative approach we use in EYFS to teach literacy, masterminded by Greg Bottrill. It brings enchantment to the classroom through storytelling, transforming learning into a magical experience. This method nurtures skills such as fine motor abilities, mathematical concepts, early writing, vocabulary development and imagination!

Each week we introduce a captivating text, ranging from picture books to quirky cartoons or charming short films. We discuss elements like the front cover, title, make predictions about the story, and explore it’s beginning, middle and end. For visual texts, we engage in lively discussions about the unfolding narrative, linking it to our termly learning themes when appropriate.

To enhance vocabulary, we learn five new words weekly related to the text. The children collaborate to create actions for each word, making vocabulary fun and dynamic. This approach introduces exciting terms while encouraging their use in play.

We spark discussions about the central character and imagine what happens when they activate the ‘magic button’ on their drawings. We then illustrate setting and embark on imaginary adventures, altering story elements with a sprinkle of magic!

The essence of Drawing Club lies in nurturing our little ones’ imaginations and enhancing their writing skills, making for a delightful journey.

 

The Curious Quests

In Rowling and Attenborough class our children begin their ‘Curious Quests’ journey after October half term and Frank start in September. The Curious Quests is an immersive adventure into story, poetry, make-believe and gives our children endless possibilities to invent, imagine and story dream.

The Curious Quests combines short carpet sessions, group work, and children exploring open-ended resource such as junk modelling, construction, playdough and role play to transform our English learning. The children use quests and key characters to provide joy in the learning of SPAG content as well as applying their phonic understanding.

The Curious Quests builds on the liberation of Drawing Club, showing our children the joy of writing and teaching them that the pen is a magic wand with endless possibilities!

Pathways To Write

Our book-based planning sequences last for between ten and twenty lessons. They include a wide range of literature we love, that will engage children to be critical readers whilst becoming confident and informed writers. All National Curriculum requirements are embedded, making the grammar purposeful and there are always a mixture of shorter, longer and extended writing outcomes where the audience and purpose is clear and exciting for children!

 

 

In KS2, we follow a Mastery approach to English through the programme ‘Pathways to Write.’ Units of work are delivered using high quality texts and children in all year groups are given varied opportunities for writing. Skills are built up through repetition within the units, and children apply these skills in the writing activities provided.  Many opportunities for widening children’s vocabulary are given through the Pathways to Write approach and this builds on the extensive work we do in school to provide our children with a rich and varied vocabulary.  

You will find the end of year expectations for writing, reading and spoken language for each of our year groups in the attached documents. For further detail on the skills that your children are learning on a termly basis, please contact your class teacher.