Are you ready for a story?

Ask EYFS, and they will tell you one!

There has been a hive of activity as EYFS joined KS1 in ‘Storytelling Week’, promoting the importance of oral storytelling in preparation for writing. Using key concepts from Pie Corbett’s ‘Talk for Writing’, Pre-Nursery, Nursery and Reception reveled in the delights of using actions, props, story maps and pictures to tell their rhyme and stories. These key concepts help children engage actively in storytelling, giving all students the confidence to use their voices no matter what level of English.

It has been a delight to walk around the department as students have run up to me to confidently use their voices to tell me parts of the story they have been learning. Well done EYFS you are truly amazing storytellers. I look forward to more storytelling from you all throughout the Summer term.

This week we have been blessed with the beautiful rays of the sun. Now that the sun has popped its head up please can I remind parents of our ‘No Hat, No Play’ policy, where all children need to have a named sunhat in school each day to ensure they can enjoy their outside play.

Wishing you all a wonderful sunny weekend. Please do continue to read to hear in-depth about each year groups ‘Storytelling Week’.

Pre-Nursery

It has been a big week for Pre-Nursery as the children built up their confidence to perform their ‘Storytelling Week’ rhyme to Reception A. The children used the concept of actions to help them tell ‘Hey Diddle, Diddle’, supporting them not only communicating the word but understanding it too. With encouragement and support from the Pre-Nursery staff, all the children did an amazing job.

Pre-Nursery have loved this rhyme and have delighted in certain parts that have brought great enthusiasm to cross-curricular learning. We used our gross motor skills to pretend to be the cow jumping over the moon and learnt what it is like to laugh like the little dog in the rhyme. Pre-Nursery loved laughing at Miss Isla’s silly faces she made to understand this emotion.

To bring everything together at the end of the week, Pre-Nursery enjoyed using their wonderful art spoon character to act out parts of the rhyme. Well done Pre-Nursery!

Nursery

Lift off!!!!! After reading Goodnight Moon, Nursery children went on a fascinating exploration of the solar system, taking a fun look at the planets and the one we call home. Nursery had much fun sculpting their own Earth, using blue for water and green for land. We talked about where we live on the planet and located other countries that we like to visit or have family. We spent time counting planets and talking about how we might travel to them!

Nursery put their performing hats on this week in celebration of ‘Storytelling Week’ and were proud to present their very own published book, “I Like…”. Nursery bravely and confidently acted out pages from our storybook using props to the delight of Year 1 students. We used our words clearly and projected our voices, sharing our thoughts and interests with friends in the greater school community.

The children enjoyed their class photography session, proudly posing for the camera and putting on their warmest smiles. We looked our best and confidently managed ourselves in an unfamiliar situation with unfamiliar people. Well done Nursery children!

Reception

What a magical week we have had in Reception! This week has been ‘Storytelling Week’ and Reception were transformed into amazing authors. During the week the children used actions to support the oral retelling of the story, ‘How Tortoise got it’s Shell’ and then wrote as characters from the story. After they created amazing Story Maps the children invented a story of their own. Today the children came to school as their favourite character and were excited to share their new stories with other classes.

In Maths we developed our knowledge of money, identifying different coins and the children had lots of fun working to solve money problems and made a Piggy Bank of their own.

We look forward to more fun next week in our Healthy School’s Week.

Miss Isla Gillespie

Head of Early Years

Storytelling Week