Hello there, my name is Miss Hetherington and I am English Lead. I look at writing, reading, spelling, handwriting and grammar across school. Throughout school we have literacy lessons, spelling lessons, handwriting practise, grammar time and much, much more. We love to show off and share our children’s work across the school, to our parents and even on our website. I love looking at children’s work and I especially love listening to children read, as I love reading myself.
My favourite book as child was, ‘The Tiger Who Came to Tea’, by Judith Kerr. I loved it when my parents read it to me and put on voices for the different characters and I also loved it because I thought I was able to get a Tiger come for Tea at my house. Books really are magical and can take you on lots of different adventures, which is why it is my main aim to make sure ALL children from across the school enjoy reading and find a variety of books that they LOVE to read.
I find English fascinating and love to see when the children are really proud of their work. We love to show the children a HUGE selection of writing genres and styles, and introduce them to a variety of authors too. We all follow the same sequence of work, where we begin the sequence with a ‘hook’ to the topic, we then look at the key features of the genre and introduce the children to any grammar that may be important to their writing. The children are always aware of the purpose of the piece of writing they are working on and have multiple opportunities to share their work with their peers, their teachers and Mr Robson.
Our School is on Shakespeare Street, which is why we have a ‘Shakespeare Week’ every year. This is to celebrate the writings of Shakespeare and expose the children to inspiring writers. I was really interested in the works of Dylan Thomas (a Welsh poet) when I was younger, I loved his poems, how he brought the words out of the page and how he created an image in the reader’s head. We also celebrate ‘National Storytelling Week’, ‘World Book Day’ and ‘National Poetry Day’, along with lots of other events too!
In School, we have a fully stocked library that is full to the brim with fiction, non-fiction books and everything in between. Each classroom also has a book area and the children have lots of opportunities throughout the year to express which books they would like in school. Here at Southwick, we celebrate reading even further by having ‘Reading Ambassadors’ and ‘Reading Buddies’, who spread the joys of reading across the school and in the community.
