English Spring 1:

Writing

Our first text this term is ‘Suffragette – The Battle for Equality’ by David Roberts. This is a two-week Writing Root using the book Suffragette: The Battle for Equality, which was published in 2018 to mark the anniversary of women receiving the vote. It is an illustrated information book which works chronologically through the history of suffrage, though in this sequence of learning we focus on some key events and use these to eventually plan our own campaign for a law that should be changed somewhere

This will be followed by ‘Stonewall’ by Rob Sanders and Jamey Christophe. The three-week sequence of learning begins by introducing children to the concepts of human rights, revolution and uprising. They will explore why the Stonewall Inn was a special place in New York City. Children will look specifically at the history of the Stonewall Inn and how this became a safe, inclusive space for the LGBTQ+ community. Children will create adverts to promote the Stonewall Inn. They will go on to record the events of the Stonewall Uprising and employ a range of journalistic techniques such as: recording quotations, using the passive voice and factual adverbials. Children will create protest banners using question tags and write in role as the building itself to reflect on the changes it has seen through history. The Writing Root will culminate with children writing a visitor’s guide for the Stonewall Inn in light of it being made a National Historic Landmark in 2000. We would recommend using the text, The Stonewall Riots, Coming Out in the Streets by Gayle E. Pitman to supplement learning. Further reading for children could also include Stories for B

We will continue to practise our handwriting and spelling skills using the ‘Penpals for Handwriting’ and ‘No Nonsense Spelling’ schemes.  We will be introducing separate grammar sessions to support our revision for the SATs tests in May.

Reading

For our Reading sessions, we will be following the ‘Literacy Leaves’ approach from Literacy Tree. Using quality texts, our aim is to create and nurture a love of reading whilst at the same time enabling children to develop a range of age-related reading skills through a variety of tasks and activities.

This term our chosen books are as follows:

‘Malala by Malala Yousafzai. This non-fiction book tells the autobiographical story of Malala Yousafzai, a young girl and internationally-known activist who stood up for what she believed in. School-loving Malala tells us her own story of how the once peaceful area of Pakistan that she lived in with her family was turned upside down and how girls were told they could no longer go to school. By standing up for girls’ rights for an education, Malala’s life was put severely at risk.

 This is the story of how, in Malala’s own words, one child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the world.

‘The Little Match Girl Strikes Back’ by Emma Carroll. This beautifully written and illustrated story is not just a retelling of the original Hans Christian Andersen tale The Little Match Girl, but a reinterpretation. The Little Match Girl Strikes Back allows the protagonist to tell her story in her own words. This version – like the original - lays bare the class inequality of Victorian London but also gives the Little Match Girl a sense of agency and defiance rather than being resigned to her ill-fated end, “…a bold new heroine for future generations to treasure.”