Thank you to all of our families who came to our first Reception parents Literacy workshop. We hope to see you all again next week for our second session! #smithdowneyfs #smithdownreaders
We really dressing up and getting in role as Little Red and the Wolf #smithdownreaders
This morning we found some treasure chests in our room. We found some clues about our new story. #smithdownreaders @misshath2 @SmithdownPr
On Friday we put Anna and Crocodile in the hot seat #smithdownreaders @clpe1
We worked in teams to make a better map than Anna and Crocodile #smithdownreaders #smithdownwriters
We retold the model text. We used picture clues to help. We are ready to write our own circular story now #smithdownwriters #smithdownreaders
For Remembrance Day, we read the poem ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ and after discussing the content, we embellished the poem with images of poppies.
We have printed trains with blocks and made marks to represent train track, trains and signals.
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We have thoroughly enjoyed reading Neil Gaiman’s version of Hansel and Gretel, so much so, it led us to writing our own dual narratives. We are so proud of the writing we have produced.
This week we have been working hard with our friends to put our Supertato story pictures into the correct order.
To celebrate the end of learning of Goldilocks and The Three Bears we hosted our own Teddy Bears Picnic. We had party food and danced with our teddies. We had a wonderful afternoon!
This week we have been looking at the story ‘The Three Billy Goats Gruff’. Outside we built a bridge to cross to the green grass. We made signs for the goats from the troll showing they can’t cross the bridge.
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We have learnt all the Makaton signs for the animals in our story and then used them to retell the story.
We retold the story in teams and performed the story to our friends.
We are enjoying our new phonics groups and have worked so hard on our fluency this week.
Today we made our own maps in preparation for our instruction texts. We had to think carefully about where the gold was hidden and then give our partner instructions to find it.
We went on a noun hunt and then acted out verbs to help us to identify the difference between the two.
Anna and Crocodile asked us for our help today. We thought about how to make a sandwich, created some plans, made some sandwiches and of course had to taste test them! Yum yum!
After researching mountain gorillas and adaptions of animals, we have just begun to write our own explanation texts. Keep an eye out for the finished pieces.
We simply had to share a few more pieces of work as we think they are truly fantastic! Detailed information which is extremely well presented. Great work Year 6!
Today we have looked at different poems for national poetry day!
In Geography, we have been finding out about renewable energy sources: why they are needed alongwith the advantages and disadvantages of each.
Author of ‘The late crew’ Rob Ferguson came to visit our school today. Some of us were so excited to even get our books signed by a real life author! We even designed our own alien that we could use in our stories. 
We found some items in our box to help us with predicting what our new class text is about.
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We are enjoying sharing the story of The Gruffalo this week! We have painted The Gruffalo and are describing The Gruffalo as part of our literacy and writing about what we can see. We also shared The Gruffalo song 🎵 and below is a link to share this at home.
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We came back into our classroom and found that someone or something had been in there! We looked at the disaster that had been left behind and asked questions about what we thought had happened!
We found
– a globe
– a map
– broken biscuits
– teapot and cups
– footprints
and…. a lot of mess!!
We really enjoyed listening to the story of The Lonely Beast. We acted out different parts of the story and retold the story to each other
Yesterday we had a great time at the International Slavery Museum. We had a workshop in the ‘legacies of the transatlantic slave trade’ and then had time to explore the museum with our task sheets. 
We have just started work on writing our own dual narratives, based on the characters and events in Neil Gaiman’s Hansel and Gretel. Such powerful openings! We can’t wait to get writing more, they will be incredible to read.
For our PSHE lesson we are celebrating differences. In previous weeks we have spoken about racism, bullying and rumours and now we are researching a range of countries and what their culture looks like.
We really enjoyed writing these dual narratives in Year 6, we used two characters from the book we read together in lessons. We hope you enjoy reading them.
The Reception children of RAG have enjoyed listening to the marvellous Christmas story, ‘The Polar Express’. They even managed to retell the story in sequence, from start to finish, using pictures. Well done!
We used role play to decide if the witch from our class text should give back the stolen happy endings. We thought of lots of reasons for and against.
We have looked through all our clues for our upcoming book… Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly. We will be discussing new vocabulary such as racism, segregation, civil rights, controversy and many more! 
This week we are sharing the story of The Snowman in Reception. Here is a link if you would like to share the story at home. ⛄️
https://www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/snowman-eng.pdf
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Before we begin writing our own diary extracts, we read and annotated a model text for language and organisational features.
We discovered some clues to our new story today! We made predictions and discussed if the clues reminded us of any other stories too.
Today we learnt about the global supply chain and the different stages our products take to get to us (the customer). We debated which part of the supply chain was the most important and how fair the pay was. Our class debate was very passionate! 
This week as part of our People Who Help Us topic, we have been learning about the jobs of the police. We have also shared and re-enacted the story of What the Ladybird 🐞 Heard as part of our learning. Below is a link to share the story at home.
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Year 5 have been looking at the poet Benjamin Zephaniah this week and yesterday we got the chance to read some of his poems. We all agreed that most of his poems have the message of justice and equality for all. 
This boy told me that he loved reading this book because the story reflected his own life experiences. Books that represent our communities matter so much.
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Yesterday we looked at clues for our new book ’Goodnight Mr Tom’. We wrote predictions and today we discussed evacuations from cities to the countryside and arguments for and against. We invited in Mrs Ridley to walk down our ‘conscience alley’ to hear our reasons. 
We worked hard to plan and write a non-chronological report. We worked in groups to write a specific paragraph.
Today we used freeze frames to think about how people might have felt during the announcement of WW2. We looked at the different reactions in our book ‘Goodnight Mr Tom’ and compared different emotions. 
Year 6 have drawn their own versions of some books they have enjoyed reading for World Book Day.
Today the children have had lots of fun dressing up as their favourite characters. We enjoyed learning all about the 101 Dalmatians and trying to find them around our school. We had lots of fun designing and decorating our own Dalmatian dogs with paint and cups!
Today we had a visit from Cruella De Vil who wanted to steal all of the Dalmatian puppies, luckily the classes were able to find all 101 of them and saved the school! What an amazing World Book Day 2025. 
Year 3 had a lovely day celebrating world book day. We read the story ‘101 Dalmatian’s’ and completed a book review on this. We also created our own dogs out of cups and black circles. In the afternoon, we learnt a new art skill in pointillism to paint our own Dalmatians.
All the costumes were amazing, thank you for yours efforts.
This week we are learning about Jack and the Beanstalk. Below is a link to the story if you would like to share it at home.
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This half term we are learning about the Victorians, but we don’t want to forget what we have learnt about our previous topic on the ancient civilisation of Baghdad. So, we played a game called Quiz, Quiz, Trade. This game involves asking questions to see how much we have remembered. We did really well!
This morning we voted as to whether we would climb the beanstalk or not! The children standing said they would climb and the children sitting down said that they would not!
In Reception literacy this week we are practicing continuing a rhyming string and enjoying lots of rhymes. We are sharing a story called Oi Frog and below is a link if you’d like to share the story at home.
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We loved exploring our clues and objects that linked to our new English topic. We made great predictions about what the story will be about and shared them with each other.
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Today we looked at different features of a pirate and labelled them.
We read a book that helped us understand what refugees are and how they might feel and spoke about the possible reasons for why someone might need to become a refugee.
We “stepped into” some pictures from our new book. We answered some questions, asked our own questions and made some predictions about our new book.
The children had lots of fun choosing what to send the Lighthouse Keeper for lunch. They choose what food and sent it down in a basket – all while trying to avoid the seagulls. We talked about what healthy choices we could make and choose his lunch very carefully. Oooooh! 🧺 🏝
In year 3 have started our new book. The children looked at pictures from this book and came up with some great questions and predictions. We are all very excited to read and learn about this book.
In English, we read the story Leon and the Place Between by Grahame Baker-Smith. One of our activities was to create a poster for the circus.
Year 6 have been writing in role this week and today they took on the role of a friend, giving advice to Rose Blanche after she told us what she had seen in the forest.
We have been exploring our new character’s feelings and how they have changed through the book. Marcy started off excited for an adventure but quickly changed to fear and worry when it went dark and she reached the cave.
We have had a wonderful start to the school year. It is lovely to see the children working hard and helping each other. We have also used our home languages to help our friends who are new to English.
We had a great time at our very own tiger tea party after sharing The Tiger Who Came to Tea.
Huge thanks to all parents for coming on Tuesday for session 2 of our literacy workshop which focused on nursery rhymes. We made Humpty Dumpty play dough and jigsaws! Please join us if you can this coming Tuesday 7th October at 2.15pm- focus will be phonics. Many thanks!
This week we have enjoyed sharing the story of Five Minutes’ Peace. We have sequenced the key events in the story and created a bubble bath for Mrs Large!
Huge thanks to so many parents who joined us for session 3 of our literacy workshop which focused on phonics. 
Yesterday morning, we went for a story, map activity and craft activity at the Palm house. In the afternoon, we followed our map and and completed some fieldwork around Sefton Park. We spotted many human and physical features of the park and added how we felt in each place on our map.
Starting our new book, we met a character that loves the sun light stroking her skin as she dances. We used this image to create our own to show how the sun makes the girl feel.
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To think about those who have lost their lives, we created some rhyming poetry. We based our poems on poppy fields, just like our art work.
We have written scripts for two characters in our book. We have used our inference skills to create a conversation that might have happened between them. Then we had some children perform their scripts to the class.
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We are reading Into the Forest by Anthony Browne. The children are enjoying looking at his fantastic illustrations and seeing what they can spot. The pictures tell the story and keep us guessing about what happens next.
On Tuesday we visited Central Library in our city centre with some of our families and we had a great time sharing books, having a look around the children section of the library and even going onto the roof to see the skyline of Liverpool.
Thanks to all parents for coming along to session 4 of our parental literacy workshop which focused on writing.Please join us on Wednesday 22nd October for our final literacy workshop. The time will be 2.15-3pm. Many thanks.