Lane End Primary School

Reading for Writing Week

Monday

The second half of the Spring Term started back to an exciting scene on the playground – a hot air balloon had landed on the junior playground and Grandad, a character from the book ‘Tom and the Island of Dinosaurs’, was there to greet the children as they arrived at school. The crowds started to grow as the children arrived at school and Grandad explained about how he had just landed...

Grandad came into assembly armed with the story of his adventures and a parcel for each class. He had been to Dinosaur Island with his grandson Tom and his friend Katy. Grandad read the whole school the story of 'Tom and the Island of Dinosaurs' as the children sat captivated! He then presented each class with their parcel - the children went back to class and opened the parcels which contained a letter from Tom and Katy asking them to help by completing some writing tasks, the parcels also contained some fiction and non-fiction books about dinosaurs which will be useful during the week. 

The children got straight on to their important work...

The children were finding out about dinosaurs, identifying dinosaurs, writing about dinosaurs, drawing dinosaurs and investigating the events of the morning.  

Tuesday

We started the day with another special assembly. Mr Toyne firstly shared some of the work from yesterday, then he told the children about some huge footprints which had been found in the field. It was up to the children to investigate what was going on.

There was lots of work to be done back in class. The children still had to complete their responses to Katy and Tom and now there were the footprints to research too.

It was important for the children to do their best writing in response to Tom and Katy's tasks and there was also a lot of maths involved in exploring and theorising about the footprints.

Wednesday

There was another exciting discovery on Wednesday. Some mysterious eggs were found in the garden. We brought them into assembly to have a look. Each class took an egg back to class to investigate further.

There was more to be done - Tom and Katy had been in touch and were using the eggs to send over their messages to each class. Everyone got quickly to work...

Thursday

What now? A parachute attached to a satchel was found dangling in a tree in the playground. We got together to find out what was inside the mysterious bag. We discovered messages from Tom, Katy and Grandad, fossils, dinosaurs trapped in ice, memory sticks and a copy of 'Tom and the Island of Dinosaurs'. Each class was given some items from the bag to explore further.

The plot was thickening. Each class had lots of work to do in order to keep helping Tom and Katy and to get ready for Grandad's return tomorrow.

Friday

Today was the day that Grandad was returning to see what we had done and to share examples of the children's excellent writing. Everyone got to work in order to get ready for the afternoon assembly.

Grandad came back and told us that Tom, Katy and the dinosaurs were safe thanks to all of our hard work. We shared our work in assembly and wished Grandad a safe journey back to his lighthouse in his hot air balloon. Who knows, maybe he'll be back one day...

See some examples of the great writing the children did during our Reading for Writing Week. There is work here from each class from Reception up to Year 6. Some of it is in draft form and some still needs completing, but it gives a good idea of how the children have been inspired to write purposefully. The level of engagement and  interest we saw during the week was fantastic and the children have written enthusiastically and have shown a desire to want to improve, respond to feedback and do well.

We have used this exciting stimulus and the books as the basis for our ‘reading for writing week’. The children had a fun and rewarding week as they used their imagination in this make-believe scenario to inspire some great writing – we were happy for them to know that it was make-believe but were insistent on the great writing!

If you have been inspired to find out more about dinosaurs at home have a look at 'Curriculum Visions' on our VLE. There are online books, videos and photo galleries to look at.

Click on the link below then log-in by using the username: lane.end and the password: SK87AL

http://www.curriculumvisions.com/

Click on the history link and go to 'Dinosaur World'.

Happy exploring!