English

Here you will find some useful information, links & resources that parents/carers can use at home, if your child is absent from school, wants to access extra work or it is a holiday period.

If your child is in EYFS, there is information on the EYFS page about picture books, phonic sounds, etc. that your child should be accessing.

Curriculum Overviews

Resources

Reading

For all the resources available online, nothing will help your child improve more than reading. This can't be stressed enough and it is important that your child reads as often as possible and sees it as a treat and not a chore.

Although many people favour owning physical books, this is not always possible and so the internet opens up a whole world of access to material online.

Please remember that reading is not just experienced through books. Magazines, newspapers, comics and audio books all play a huge part in the development of children.

Amazon Kindle - Amazon's Kindle offers every book imaginable, ready to read on a Kindle product or through their various reader apps for iOS or Android.

FirstNews - An award-winning weekly newspaper for children. Although we have copies in school, this newspaper comes highly recommended. It is well-written, set out the same way as an adult's newspaper and includes crosswords, debates and sports.

Audible - An amazon company, which offers storybooks for all ages and this is a great way of your child hearing well-read texts, which will increase their joy of stories. This is especially useful for children who do not speak English as their first language at home.

Phoenix Comics - Sometimes reluctant readers can be eased into reading  through comics. Phoenix Comics provides a great set of illustrated works aimed at children aged 7-14, which really boosts imagination. Another highly recommended subscription.

There are many other providers of reading material online but always monitor any online purchases.

English Activity - Questioning Grid - Here is an example of how you can challenge you child whilst they are reading, examining facts and prediction.

English Activity - Inference Questions - Here is an example of how inference works within a text. This can be adapted for any passage your child is reading. (Tom's Story)

English Activity - Inference Questions - Another inference passage. (Railway Yeard)

Writing

Activity Ideas - Here is a list of ideas that you can do with your child, as they are reading their books.

English Activity - Newspaper Report - A template for writing a newspaper report. This is can about anything at all so get creative!

Creative Writing Ideas - Ideas for you to use to try an inspire some really creative writing.

English Activity - Character Creation - A template that will help you to make up your own character. This could be a new character in a story your child is already reading or something imagined in any situation.

English Activity - Book Review - A template for writing a book review. Any book your child reads, they should be given time to reflect on their thoughts towards it.

Letter-join - This is the handwriting model we use here at St Thomas and so our expectation is that every child keeps trying to improve their handwriting.

Authorfy - This website offers interactive video classes and activities from brilliant children’s authors.  It includes videos of authors reading and discussing their work and downloadable materials.  It’s free to register.

So parents/carers can see the progress their child is making with their handwriting, the current letter formation being taught in school looks like this: