English

Reading

We believe that learning to read is one of the most important things we will ever do. We love reading here at Edith Neville and make sure that we read high quality texts by excellent authors as much as possible. Our younger children read with an adult every single day and our older children enjoy whole class reading lessons using the Destination Reader programme. Some children also participate in extra individual or group lessons too. For all those really serious book worms amongst us, book club takes place once a week.

Families are invited in to school every term to learn how to support their children with reading. We know that if parents love books then children will love books too. We ask families to read with their children every day so that children can become fantastic readers as young as possible. We make sure that we change every young child’s book three times a week so they have plenty of exposure to many different stories and texts. Our older children tackle some extremely ambitious novels, therefore, they change their books independently once they have devoured their latest book from cover to cover.

Book Week is one of the most momentous weeks in the year at Edith Neville. Everyone (including adults) are encouraged to come in dressed up as a character from a book. Often, we theme our classes for Book Week. In the past, this has been around specific authors such as Anthony Browne or Road Dahl and subjects such as ‘Inventors and Inventions’. Children and families have created some awe-inspiring, home-made costumes which bring a smile and a gasp to everyone’s face!

We believe that reading for pleasure is one of the best ways to spend our time, so we make sure that we bury our noses in books whenever we can!

Writing

Our children are immersed in the worlds of high quality texts and inspired by the characters and adventures that they find within them. Here at Edith Neville, we have seen this immersive approach transform the way children feel about writing.

Our children engage with high quality picture books, novels, poetry and non-fiction through a wide range of teaching methods. We love to explore texts through music, art, drama, discussion and role-play which bring carefully chosen and wonderfully exciting stories to life. As much as possible, we participate in trips that stimulate our ideas for writing. Year Six recently went to watch War Horse as part of a writing project with the National Theatre!

In addition to inspiring texts, we use ‘Penpals for Handwriting’ to build confident young writers who have the skills to communicate their fantastic ideas quickly and clearly on paper. Grammar is also a strong focus and we make sure that our grammar lessons provide the building blocks for writing exceptional sentences.

We believe that communicating our wonderful ideas on paper is an extremely valuable skill, so we spend as much time jotting, noting and writing as we possibly can.