Work 2022-2023
June 2023 – Shakespeare Performance
After weeks of hard work, Year 6 were delighted to perform part of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night at Bishop Auckland Town Hall as part of the County Durham ensemble.
They did so well to speak Shakespeare’s language and perform in front of such a large audience. We had lots of nervous children beforehand but you’d never know it due to the confident performances.
We are very proud of every single one of you!
June 2023 – KS1 Author Zoom Chat
Year 1 and 2 had the pleasure of joining a Zoom call with author Lauren Hoffmeier. Lauren read her new book ‘Mula and the Unsure Elephant’ to the children and then guided them through our very own yoga session to celebrate International Yoga Day. She was live from New York and answered many questions about her new book!
March 2023 – World Book Day
The whole school got involved with World Book Day. We did paired reading with children from other classes, a teacher reader swap, dressed up as our favourite characters and did lots of activities related to books.
February 2023 – Y3 Library Visit
The children in Y3 thoroughly enjoyed their trip to the library. They listened to a story and completed some activities before loaning some books to bring back to school.
February 2023 – National Storytelling Week
For National Storytelling Week, each class took part in a range of activities linked to telling stories. Some of the children wrote their own stories which they then read to another child in their class or a different year group. We also had lessons where the children were using props to tell stories and lots of examples of the children being creative.
January 2023 – Y6 Research
Y6 have started reading their class book ‘Goodnight Mister Tom’ and finding out more about life as evacuees during WW2. They worked in groups o carry out research using a range of sources to help with ideas for writing diary entries in role as evacuees.
If any of the children have older relatives who experienced life during the war, it would be great if they could ask them some questions to find out their experiences.
January 2023 – Y5 Reading
5C have been working in pairs to investigate inference skills to help to improve their reading.
December 2022 – Reading Plus
This term, the children in KS2 have started using an online reading program called Reading Plus. This aims to develop their silent reading fluency and comprehension skills and we are seeing some excellent results. A huge congratulations to Brooke from Y6 for being the first child to read over 150,000 words.
December 2022 – Y2 Library Visit
Lots of our classes have visited the local library this year. Our Y2 children recently visited the library to exchange their library books. They took part in a range of Roald Dahl themed activities including a treasure hunt, colouring and craft activities.
October 2022 – Y2 The Enormous Turnip
This half term, in English Y2 children have been reading ‘The Enormous Turnip’. The children read and followed a recipe on how to make a turnip soup. They used what they did to help them to write their own set of instructions in English.
September 2022 – Roald Dahl Day
We enjoyed exploring some of Roald Dahl’s stories and seeing the children dressed up in yellow or as some of his characters for Roald Dahl Day. Can you guess which characters these children from Y4 are pretending to be?
September 2022 – International Literacy Day Y3
For International Literacy Day, Year 3 discussed some of their favourite books, why reading is important and then wrote book reviews.
September 2022 – Y6 Poetry
To help the children to develop their understanding of poetry, we use lots of different techniques. In this lesson, the class were split into small groups with each group given the task of reading a section of the poem, adding actions to help others to understand it.
English in Action at Dean Bank 2021-2022
Long Term Plans
You can view the long term plans for English to see what is taught in each each year group here.
Whole School English Texts Long Term Plans
May 2022: Y4 Persuasive Letters
Summer term work in Reception
This term, reception class have worked on 2 aspects of writing. Firstly, the children have been encouraged to use their phonics knowledge and skills to write with greater independence. As a result, they have developed confidence in their own ability. Secondly, reception class have been developing their writing skills and ability by learning about the different ways we can structure words. This has included writing simple sentences, descriptive sentences as well as writing lists. English work has been linked to focus stories and tasks, therefore the children have wrote about the Queen as part of our jubilee celebrations as well as the stories of The 3 Billy Goats Gruff and Aliens Love Underpants. This has also helped in supporting and consolidating children’s knowledge and understanding on these topics/stories.
June 2022: Reading Plus
Year 5 have been trialling a new website called ‘Reading Plus’ and they have been thoroughly enjoying reading the different texts and trying to improve their reading speed and comprehension scores. Almost all of the children have already earned their first certificate. Huge congratulations to Hope who was the first person in the class to read over 50,000 words. Keep it up, Y5!
June 2022: The Three Billy Goats Gruff in EYFS
The children in EYFS enjoyed reading the Three Billy Goats Gruff. They had fun acting out the story to help them to remember it, making their own bridges as well as learning about different sizes and vocabulary (big/large, medium, small/tiny) and making comparisons of size (biggest/smallest, shortest/tallest, etc).
May 2022: KS2 Parent Reading Workshops
In May, each of the KS2 classes had a parent reading workshop to support parents with reading with their children at home.
March 2022: Shakespeare at Bishop Auckland Town Hall
Some of Year 5 and 6 performed as part of a Shakespeare festival at Bishop Auckland Town Hall. They have been working incredibly hard to learn their lines and make sure that they understood the complicated play ‘Much Ado About Nothing’.
It must have been very scary for them all to perform in front of such a large audience but they all rose to the challenge and were absolute stars!
Thank you very much to all of the parents and carers who came along to show their support and also for everyone who has helped the children learn their lines at home and shown encouragement.
March 2022: Reading Workshops
Each class invited parents and carers into school for a reading workshop.
The adults had a school dinner with their children and then took part in some reading activities to learn more about how reading works in school.
March 2022: World Book Day
For World Book Day, we held a book exchange, where children could swap a pre-loved book for another of their choice and the children took part in paired reading with different year groups. We also dressed up as our favourite book characters and children completed lots of other activities linked to books.
February 2022: Storytelling Week
Year 5 enjoyed writing their own stories during Storytelling Week, taking inspiration from a range of stories that they read.
heir target audience was KS1 pupils so once they were finished, they visited Year 1 to share their stories.
They got some great reviews!
“I give it 1000 out of 10!”
“I really loved the story and want to listen again”
“It was 100,000 out of ten!”
January 2022: Shakespeare Project in Y5 and 6
Did you know that our school is a RSC (Royal Shakespeare Company) Associate School? Our teachers get training from RSC staff and each year we work on a new play. Children in years 5 and 6 are currently working on Much Ado About Nothing for this year’s project.
The children began by playing some games and warm ups to help them work together as a team and build their confidence. Then they moved onto learning about the story of the play. We will be working towards a performance at Bishop Auckland Town Hall later in the spring term.
December 2021: Poetry in Y5
Year 5 enjoyed exploring The Highwayman and The Listeners in December. They found a lot of similarities between the two poems and completed writing tasks based on each poem. They produced some fantastic description to describe the setting of The Listeners.
December 2021: Nursery
Our nursery children have been working on recognising their names and they have also been exploring a range of books by different authors.
December 2021: Reception phonics and guided reading
In our Reception class, the children have been continuing with their phonics development using Sounds-Write and they have also been exploring books with adults in guided reading.
December 2021: Y1 story telling
Here are some examples of writing from Year 1. They are trying very hard to use their phonics knowledge to spell words.
November 2021: Y2 Sounds-Write
Y2 are really enjoying their phonics sessions using Sounds-Write.
They are always very enthusiastic and keen to join with all of the activities.
Well done Y2! I’m sure you are going to make excellent progress this year.
November 2021: Y3 letter writing
Year 3 explored the features of a formal letter and then wrote formal letters of complaint.
November 2021: Y5 Writing Awards
Well done to our talented writers from Y5 who have been chosen by Young Writers to have their poems published in a book.
They all wrote poems about themselves for the theme of ‘This Is Me’ and their poems will now feature in a book. I’m very proud of all of you!
November 2021: Y5 and 6 author chat
It was a brilliant opportunity for Year 5 and 6 to read some of Thomas Taylor’s books and then to be able to send him questions to answer on a video meeting.
Rebecca, “It was so exciting when he said my name and answered my question!”
Hope, “I loved hearing about life as an author.”
October/ November 2021: Year 5 and 6 performing playscripts
Year 5 and 6 have both covered play scripts this term and they enjoyed performing play scripts, examining the features and then writing play scripts based on their class novels.
Sept 2021: Y5 and 6 – International Literacy Day
The children in years 5 and 6 thought about why literacy is important as part of International Literacy Day and made acrostic poems using our ideas.
Sept 2021: Y2 – Beegu role play
2020-2021
Y1 English carousel – Oct 2020
Y1 have been taking part in an English carousel with different reading and writing activities.
The Enormous Turnip – Oct 2020
Y2’s new class story is The Enormous Turnip.
This week they have been learning about verbs.
To help the children understand what they are they’ve been using role play to act out some of the powerful verbs they’ve found in the story.
National Poetry Day – Oct 2020
For National Poetry Day, each class spent some time exploring a new poem and creating their own poems.
Y6 worked on the poem ‘What is pink?’ by discussing the poem and playing a game to describe objects and guess what other children were describing.
Next, they created their own poems based on colours and produced some fantastic work.
Roald Dahl Day – Sep 2020
For Roald Dahl Day, each class completed activities linked to one or more of Roald Dahl’s books.
The children were also invited to dress up as a Roald Dahl character or wear yellow because that was Roald Dahl’s favourite colour!
Exploring Beegu in Y2 – Sep 2020
Year 2 are enjoying their new class book which is Beegu by Alexis Deacon.
They had great fun creating freeze frames of the story.
Y1 Continuous provision – Sep 2020
Our Y1 pupils are settling in well to Y1 and enjoying accessing reading and writing within their continuous provision.
Some of the children enjoyed looking through Elmer in their castle.