Date Posted: 13/12/2024Current News
Category / School News Posted on: 10/10/2024
A focus on English, reading, and our new Junior library space!
Senior School:
Students in the Senior School have started the academic year by reading a wide range of short stories that challenge, entertain and inspire!
In Year 9, students studied ‘The Colour of Humanity’ by Bali Rai and wrote an email to Mrs Yates (coordinator of the UNICEF group) explaining how and why this poignant tale about the loss of childhood innocence could be used as part of an anti-racism campaign at Kingshott, with many recognising the truth in the author’s observation that “empathy is the first line of defence against hatred” and discrimination.
Meanwhile in Year 8, students have been reading and critiquing stories with unexpected endings and terrific twists and will soon prepare to write their own! There were lively discussions about the trickster in Roald Dahl's ‘The Hitch-hiker’.
The stories chosen for Year 7 have explored parents and children and students have responded with maturity to the suffering of a child labourer called Ishwar (in ‘The Paradise Carpet’) and with good humour to a mother’s decision to temporarily ‘resign’ from her responsibilities (in ‘Resigned’)!
All the stories studied appear in anthologies published by the English and Media Centre for young readers and cover the English literary heritage, seminal world literature and contemporary writers.
Junior School:
Our youngest pupils have been enjoying Talk4Writing – with Year 1 being fully immersed in their "Enchanted Woodlands" topic. The children arrived to find the classroom in chaos after an unexpected visitor trampled through, leaving muddy footprints and the remnants of a picnic! But our Year 1 detectives were unfazed, eagerly investigating the scene with magnifying glasses in hand. After piecing together the clues, they concluded that none other than the Big Bad Wolf was the culprit! Through role-playing and oral re-telling of our model text, ‘Little Red Riding Hood’, the children explored a world of imagination, and thoroughly enjoyed generating their own creative ideas and stories. We’ve been delighted to read their innovative tales, full of rich descriptive language and innovative storytelling. This ties beautifully with their wider curriculum, including a recent trip to meet a variety of owls as part of our work in science and the children’s fantastic clay hedgehog creations.
The staff and children in our Ashbrook (Junior) building have been working hard to develop our library area. It looks fantastic and is a truly inspiring place to enjoy and develop reading for our pupils. In the meantime, Year Four been using Harry Potter, Alice in Wonderland, The Magic Faraway Tree and The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe to develop their appreciation of a variety of portals into new worlds in children’s literature. This has inspired them to create their own portals and they have relished the opportunity to step into their own imagery world through their writing. Their creativity has spanned from A Land of Sweets to Golf-Ville!
