At Queen’s Hill we want our children to love expressing themselves through writing and feel proud of their writing achievements. Children will be motivated to write through the use of engaging texts, experiences and a range of other exciting stimuli. We strive to equip children to develop a rich vocabulary which can help them bring their writing to life. Our writing is purposeful and covers a variety of genres and key skills, which builds upon prior knowledge. Teachers model the writing process and demonstrate the ambitious high standards expected of all children.
At Queen’s Hill we want our children to be confident readers and have a lifelong passion for reading. Reading is at the heart of everything we do at Queen’s Hill. Children are exposed to high quality texts across the curriculum and reading skills are taught explicitly in all year groups. Reading is a key part of our daily routine and it is celebrated through our ‘Read for a Star’ challenge.
In EYFS and Key Stage One, key reading and phonic skills are taught through Read Write Inc phonics programme. In Key Stage Two, we use ‘Reading Masters’ to support our children with their development of key comprehension skills. Reading for pleasure is a cornerstone of our approach, we are very fortunate to have two school libraries which children can access.
Subject in Action
Year 3 and Reception Buddies
Year 3 had a great afternoon with their reception buddies on Thursday. They were able to ask about their learning this half term and then share their own fantastic Egyptian non-chronological reports. They have worked so hard on them and it was great to celebrate success!
Year 1 & Year 4 buddy research
This week, year one and year four pupils buddied up for an afternoon session of African animal research on the iPads. It was wonderful to see such polite and caring partnerships between our older and younger students. Our year ones went away with lots of interesting and useful facts about meerkats, lions and giraffes which … Read more
Year 2 Writing
This morning the Year 2 children came into their classrooms and found all of their chairs had been taken away! Luckily this week they have been learning how to use their writing skills to persuade someone so they quickly wrote letters and made posters for their teachers to convince them to give their chairs back. … Read more
Shakespeare Day!
To kick-start their new English unit: Romeo & Juliet, Year 6 enjoyed participating in a variety of Shakespeare-related activities! Children took part in a scavenger hunt, collecting the answers to questions about the famous playwright and his works. They had to match symbols on their sheet to answers hidden away all around the playground. They … Read more
Year 2 and 3 Sharing Work
This morning Year 2 and Year 3 spent some time together sharing their writing. Year 2 read their buddy their fairy tale and Year 3 shared their persuasive posters. They all had a great time listening to their buddy’s work!
Phonics in Reception
Children have been working hard and enjoying learning new sounds everyday. We also welcomed parents in this week for an ‘Introduction to Phonics’ meeting to help understand how we teach phonics using the Read, Write, Inc scheme.
Descriptive writing in Year 6
This week, Year 6 have continued exploring emotive character descriptions based on the key text, ‘Rose Blanche’. They have learnt all about figurative language and its effect on the reader. Working as a class, they compiled everyone’s ideas to create a shared write based on a specific point in the text. We think they have … Read more
Year 3 Research
Year 3 have been exploring Greta Thunberg. They are looking at sustainability and the book ‘Greta and the Giants’. Today, they showed great independence when researching their own facts about her in order to create a biography next week.
Y4 Persuasive Speeches
Over the last few weeks, Year 4 have been learning all about what makes a great speech. They were then set a task by Mrs. Suffield to help her decide whether she should move her family to Queen’s Hill or the centre of Norwich. Y4 have been working incredibly hard to collate their ideas and … Read more