Our focus stories

Every 2 weeks we focus on a story. When we look at a story we explain the vocabulary, name the different parts of the book and talk about the jobs of an author and illustrator. We retell the story multiple times using actions and drama whilst encouraging the children to join in with the words. During free play the children can use props such as puppets, masks and other tools to re-enact the story. 

Many of our focus stories below (in the order we have read them) are available to watch and listen to on YouTube. Watch them with your child and ask them questions to check their understanding, encourage them to reply to your questions using full sentences.

Questions could include: What is the title of the story? Where is the story set? Who are the characters in the story? What happened at the beginning of the story? What happened next? What happened at the end of the story? Was it a happy or sad ending? Why? Did you like the story? Why? / Why not?

Ask you child more specific questions relating to the story and see if they can retell the story too. Perhaps they could think of a different ending to the story. They could draw a picture of their ending and/or write about it!

You could also read some books related to our focus stories such as other books by the same author, books with the same characters or books with similar themes. This will support your child to have a really good understanding of our key texts.

Spring Term

For our spring term we will be looking at a series of books by Nick Butterworth. The stories we will be focusing on are One Snowy Night, After the Storm and The Rescue Party. Throughout each of these stories we unpick a lot of the vocabulary giving meaning with a picture or action.

When reading the story of One Snowy Night we named the different woodland animals and found out different facts about moles and foxes. We pretended to be different woodland animals and moved like them. Once we knew the story well we sequenced the events and spoke about what happens at the beginning, middle and end of the story.

In the story ‘After the Storm’ the animals wake up after a storm to their house being destroyed. We played storm music and imagined we were there and thought about how the animals might have felt. We enjoyed going through the park with Percy and for the animals to have a new tree house home.

In ‘The Rescue Party’ story we looked at what a well is and how it is used. We spoke about the differences between a rabbit and a hare. During this story a hare gets stuck down the well, we made predictions as to what would happen at the end of the story and problem solved how we could get the hare out of the well.

Autumn Term

Boggity Bog

Boggity Bog is a repetitive story which encourages the children to join and remember the story. Throughout this story we have spoken a lot about vegetables, which vegetables we like or do not like and which vegetables we have not tasted yet. We have spoken why vegetables are good for you and then did our own vegetable tasting. After we took a vote of which was liked the most or least. 

The Three Billy Goats Gruff

The Three Billy Goats Gruff try to get over to the other hillside to get to the sweet green grass but the big bad troll stopped them in their tracks, until the Great Big Billy Goat Gruff came along and knocked him into the river. Throughout the story we will talk about the new vocabulary they will come across using pictures and name the different parts of the book. 

The children will take on the role of different characters to think about how they might have been feeling and why. They will also change the ending of the story to create a new one. 

The Little Red Hen

The Little Red Hen asks her farm animal friends to help her make some bread. Unfortunately the farm animals are reluctant to help her, so The Little Red Hen makes it herself. Throughout this story we talk about why it is good to help others and the benefits of this. The children will learn the process of planting a grain of wheat and letting it grow, to harvesting the wheat, taking it to the mill to make flour, to then being able to use it to make bread. 

We will talk through the vocabulary using pictures and give a simple definition. During the second week the children will make their own bread rolls. 

Things to do to help your child with their literacy skills:

• Read stories- don't forget to discuss the story with your child afterwards to check they have listened, ask them questions about the story to check they have understood it. You could also ask them to predict what will happen and ask if they liked the story and why they liked or didn't like it. Begin with "What" questions and if your child finds this easy move on to "How" and "Why" questions to help them develop more detailed responses and ideas.

• To support children to gain strength in their hands in order to write encourage your child to do lots of mark making, threading beads, play dough and to construct using materials such as Lego. Any activities that will get their arms, wrists, hands and fingers really moving!

• Encourage your child to practice writing their name, remember only the first letter should be a capital letter.

• Support your child to form their letters correctly -see the picture below to show you how the letters should be formed and the rhymes we say to remind children how to form them as they write.

• Sing songs and rhymes with your child.

• Spend time talking to your child e.g. if you go for a walk, talk about the things you see such as cars, houses and trees.  Ask them questions about those things too.

• Encourage your child to use their ‘Fred Fingers’ to spell simple words like ‘cat’, ‘jam’ and ‘red’.

• Once your child can write simple words encourage them to write a simple sentence such as ‘a dog can run’.

• When your child is writing simple sentences encourage them to remember to use finger spaces between words and a full stop at the end of the sentence.