Reception Overview for reading and writing Year 1 Overview for reading and writing
Year 2 Overview for reading and writing Year 3 Overview for reading and writing
Year 4 Overview for reading and writing Year 5 Overview for reading and writing
Year 6 Overview for reading and writing
Read to Write empowers teachers to provide high-quality teaching of writing through high-quality literature. These detailed units of work centre on engaging, vocabulary-rich texts, with a wealth of writing opportunities within and across the curriculum and they also signpost wider curriculum enrichments.
These units provide:
Read to Write is evidence-based teaching of writing. These units have been carefully mapped out so the entire statutory curriculum for English is covered for each year group, supporting our school to build a rich curriculum.
This boy created sentences about the story The Emperor’s New Clothes. A substitution table helped provide support to write different types of sentences. This story contains themes such as vanity and greed as well as humour. We’ve enjoyed reading it together.
We have been reading the story of Rumpelstiltskin. It is an old German fairy tale that was written many years ago. These children have worked so hard with their writing. I have been very impressed.
This morning we focused on synonyms for the 6 words we have been looking at in Jemmy Button – voyage, magnificent, civilised, year, gazed and savages. We then recorded the best alternative words to use in our future work.
We took on the role of one of the characters in the short story we are currently reading: Mad Miss Marney. We assumed the role of Kate after her first visit to Mad Miss Marney’s house.
After completing a narrative, we have now written newspaper reports based on events within the short animation we based our narrative on: Francis.
We worked hard to plan and write a non-chronological report. We worked in groups to write a specific paragraph.
These children have worked so hard today on their independent writing. Well done!
We have been intrigued learning about Miep Gies and the role she played in helping to hide eight Jewish people in an annexe in Amsterdam during World War II but perhaps more importantly, how she was the one who found and kept safe Anne Frank’s diary.
Reaching the end of our unit, we learnt how the voting situation changed for women. Those courageous ladies achieved their aim and helped shape society today.
Working together to gather ideas before planning our own independent write, based on our novel Pea Boy. ✍️📖
We discovered some clues to our new story today! We made predictions and discussed if the clues reminded us of any other stories too.
Before we begin writing our own diary extracts, we read and annotated a model text for language and organisational features.
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.
This week, the children have loved writing Christmas Card inserts to their families. They enjoyed practicing their early writing skills using the knowledge they have gained. This afternoon, they are excited to begin designing their cards…I am excited to see their creativity!
Today in our art lesson we looked at different examples of Arabic calligraphy and have had a go at our own.
Today we looked at different pictures of artefacts in museums around the world and how they were used during the transatlantic slave trade. We discussed the life of an enslaved person and the hardships they faced.
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.
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.
Some incredible examples of extra work done at home. I have loved seeing how passionate we are about negative numbers, Olaudah Equiano and Roman numeral – keep it up, we love proudly displaying your work!
This week we are writing our own twisted tale narrative. We spent this morning exploring what a good one looks like, locating features and writing our own alternative ending.
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.
Year 4 had a fun creative morning today. They loved playing the witch and Jub. We also used macaroni to add inverted commas into our speech that we had acted out. 
Year 4 had a fun morning creating speech and acting it out. We loved being the villainous witch and sweet, little Jub. We used macaroni to add inverted commas to our speech.
In Science, Year 6 have been learning about Charles Darwin as part of their ‘Evolution and Inheritance’ unit. Look at this incredible writing they have produced!
After learning about renewable energy sources, we have just begun to produce our own persuasive / information leaflets about solar power.
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 are simply blown away by the writing we have recently produced. Our Year 6 classes are so invested in world issues – saving habitats and animals in particular. Have a read of some of the letters we wrote to the Rwandan Government, asking them to help protect the magnificent mountain gorillas 🦍
In Geography, we have been finding out about renewable energy sources: why they are needed alongwith the advantages and disadvantages of each.
I used fronted adverbials, conjunctions, subordinating conjunctions and personification. ⭐️🥳
177
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!
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.
In Year 6 today, we combined our learning from Geography and English by using our computer skills to present the information we have discovered into Google Sites to create our own web pages.
Year 3 had a great start to their first shared write of the year. We have been learning about imperative verbs, rhetorical questions, adverbs and how instructions are laid out. We put all the new skills we have been learning to the test and used them to create a set of instructions about how to be a mischievous child, based on our reading book ‘Seen and Not Heard’
Parents watch out! Your children came up with some very interesting ideas!
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!
Anna and Crocodile are trying to make a sandwich. We wrote our first set of instructions and then made a sandwich to check we had included all the steps. We learned that a set of instructions needs a ‘What you need’ list and a Method.
We went on a noun hunt and then acted out verbs to help us to identify the difference between the two.
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 retold the story in teams and performed the story to our friends.
This morning we have had lots of fun playing in our Asda supermarket. We have been writing shopping lists and paying for our food with money.
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.
We read some accounts of evacuation during WW2, comparing content and explaining what information and evidence each source provided.
We have printed trains with blocks and made marks to represent train track, trains and signals.
154
We have created some beautiful poems after reading Flanders Fields and used watercolours/charcoal/pencils to create some poppy artwork to mark Remembrance Day.
How AMAZING is this piece of work informing us about the consequences of palm oil! ? So informative and so incredibly well presented. #smithdowngeog #smithdownwriters
This morning we started to research @maejemison and tomorrow we will start our biographies of her life! #smithdownwriters
