Year 5's Reading River Project

Year 5’s homework project for this half term has been to create a ‘Reading River’ to showcase all that they have read during the past month. We were stunned by the creativity of the children, with projects ranging from posters to 3D bookshelves. These are now being displayed in our school library for the rest of the school to see and be inspired by.

Thank you to all of the parents who joined us for our UNCRC assembly and to celebrate the children’s hard work on their reading projects.

World Book Day in Nursery

We had a fantastic time on Friday listening to stories and showing our costumes for World Book Day.   We were dressed up as a variety of different book characters.

 We learned to say a poem and performed it to the Reception Classes.

The poem we learned is called...

 "Grandma's Glasses"

These are Grandma's glasses, 

This is Grandma's hat.

Grandma folds her arms like this 

And puts them in her lap.

These are Grandpa's glasses,

This is Grandpa's hat.

Grandpa folds his arms like this

And takes a little nap.

World Book Day Year 6

Year 6 had a very different day today as they celebrated all things related to reading as part of ‘World Book Day’! 

Firstly, everyone had the opportunity to salute their favourite book by dressing up as a character or by creating an information poster about their chosen text (in the hope that their recommendation would inspire others to read their chosen book). Even the teachers got into the spirit and dressed up as characters from The Hobbit; The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas; and Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. 

It was then time for the highlight of the day, which was the opportunity to work with Jess Green - a special guest poet - who had been invited to Chilcote to inspire the children's writing and performing. As part of Jess's fun and informative workshop, Year 6 pupils explored how to write more creatively and then practised performing poetry out loud to a large audience. 

Well done Year 6 for such a memorable ‘World Book Day 2019’!

World Book Day in Year 6

On Thursday 2^nd March, there were a wide variety of wonderful book characters wandering around in Year 6. The fantastic costumes ranged from Gangsta Grannies (from David Walliam’s novel ‘Gangsta Granny’) to The Queen of Hearts (from Lewis Carol’s ‘Alice in Wonderland’) to Newt Scamander (J.K. Rowling’s fictional author of ‘Dangerous Beasts and Where to Find Them’). J. K. Rowling’s characters were particularly popular, so much so that the year 6 classrooms looked more like Hogwarts than Chilcote! Staff from year 6 came dressed as characters from the year group novel ‘Goodnight Mister Tom’.

One activity from the day involved the children learning a poem off by heart. As Year 6 have recently been researching and writing about animal rights in English lessons, they learnt ‘Blake’s Tiger Revisited’ which is a poem about how tigers in captivity gradually lose their colour. The poet took inspiration from William Blake’s ‘The Tyger’ and the children had the opportunity to compare the two poems.

Once they had performed their memorised poems, the pupils had the chance to take part in a poetry workshop with a visiting young poet called Jess. After listening to some of her originals and playing rhyming games, the children wrote their own poem entitled ‘I came from…’ which they shared with one another.

World Book Day in Year 2

Year 2 have had a fantastic day celebrating World Book Day today. We dressed up as characters from our favourite stories and some of us brought our books in to share. If you came to year 2, you might have seen Batman, Matilda, Pocahontas or even the BFG! We spent time finding out about each other’s costumes and stories.

We also found out about nonsense poems and read a few together. We have used actions and learnt the beginning of the poem ‘On the Ning-Nang-Nong’ by Spike Milligan.

At the end of the day, we had an assembly taken by poet Jess Green. She shared one of her poems with us and we found out a bit about what it is like to be a poet.

We would like to take this opportunity to share with you some of the poetry we have been writing in Year 2 this term, all on the theme of the circus.

Year 5's Rivers of Reading

This term, Year 5 have been creating 'Rivers of Reading' as part of our homework. This was a new project that encouraged us to reflect on our reading and record everything we read at home! For example, lots of children read different types of texts, such as reports from newspapers and magazine articles (although fiction books were the main choice). 

Some of the highlights include:

• Anna's river of books that recorded everything she had read over the last month. On each 'kayak' she wrote the name of the best book she had read that week!                                                                         

• Tyler’s reading record was terrific – with various mentions of the different text types he had read.                                                                                                                          

• Katie-Jane made an awesome tree with seven leaves representing the things she had read. Her absolute favourite was called ‘Moondial’, which she said was a massive mystery!                                                                                       

• Luke did an impeccable poster of different texts, such as: 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid', 'Survivors' (which made a nice change from story books) and Tom Gates. He even wrote about his club leaflet – from the Boys' Brigade.

In conclusion, we believe that the project helped inspire the Year 5 pupils to engage in their books and enjoy their reading time! It has helped many of us understand the importance of reading, and how much of it we do already! We now look forward to seeing many more projects from across the year group.

Thanks, Katie-Jane and Anna.

Reception`s visit to the Post Office to post our letters to Santa.

On Tuesday 6th December , R Ash and R Oak walked to the Post Office to post our letters to Santa. 

We wrote them last week , sounding out our words carefully and using our fancy flicks in our handwriting.  We sang  Christmas songs outside the Post Office too.

Thank you very much to all the Mums and Dads who came to help us, it was lovely to have your company and support.

Reception`s visit to Yardley Wood library

On Monday 13th June, R Oak and R Ash visited Yardley Wood library to learn about being a library member. We enjoyed looking at all the different books,  we shared a story with the librarians and learned about how to borrow books.

Lots of us joined as members and were able to borrow some books to take home to share with our families.
Remember to take your books back by 11th July- and then you can borrow some new ones!

We enjoyed travelling there on the school minibus and in cars.
Thank you very much to all our families who met us there and to Mr Cross for driving us there and back in the minibus.

Fictional Characters Entry Point day in Reception

At the beginning of our new topic ‘Fictional Characters` we came into school dressed up as our favourite fictional character.

We enjoyed talking about our characters and describing their looks and personalities. 

We also created dens for them to live in and decorated life sized pictures of them.    

Can you identify our different characters?

World Book Day in Year 6

Today was Chilcote’s World Book Day and Year 6, along with the rest of the school took a day away from their normal timetable for a day focused on reading. From the Demon Dentist to Where’s Wally, the children transformed themselves into their favourite characters, dressed in some fantastic and creative costumes.

The focus of World Book Day was ‘Performance Poetry so the day began with a whole school assembly, in which Serena Arthur, Birmingham’s Young Poet Laureate, joined us to share some amazing poems. After assembly Serena performed some more of her poems for Year 6 and the children were able to ask her questions about her role. It was incredible to have the opportunity to listen and learn from such a motivating 17 year old, especially as she began writing poetry in Year 6!

Each year group was given a famous poem to study, learn and then recite as part of a professional performance! Year 6 learnt a poem called If- by Rudyard Kipling which was written over one hundred years ago for the poet’s son. After practising in classes the children had the opportunity to share their work with Year 5 and watch their performances too. Hopefully we are going to perform If- to the whole school in an assembly soon. 

Below are videos of one of our rehearsals.

World Book Day 2016 - Visit of Birmingham's Young Poet Laureate, Serena Arthur!

A very special guest visited Chilcote on March 2nd 2016, named Serena Arthur, the young Poet Laureate of Birmingham. As part of her amazing role, Serena has been travelling to fortunate schools across Birmingham to offer helpful advice on how to perform and write poetry. 

Despite only being seventeen years old, amazingly, Serena has written over fifty inspiring poems! She has written creations such as: Remember, Remember (the poem that won her the Poet Laureate competition), as well as work based on the themes of war, modernity and reality.

Chilcote pupils were very lucky to hear Serena's poems as part of a fantastic assembly; she read a couple of her favourite ones in front of the whole school (including a poem she wrote specifically for deaf children). Furthermore, she also visited Year 6 to recite a few more pieces that were aimed at more older children (such as a poem about Remembrance Day and the Holocaust). 

All of Chilcote's children learnt lots of other useful information too, as the School Council asked Serena questions about how she became such a spectacular poet. For example, we gleamed that Serena initially failed in her attempt to win the Poet Laureate competition; she had to demonstrate great resilience to come back the following year and win! This was truly an inspiring guest speaker!

Thank you for reading. We hope that all the children enjoyed the guest speaker as much as we did! Thank you to Serena (and her Dad) for visiting. 

Roberta and Dawud

Year 6 

Chilcote School Council.

World Book Day in Year 4

Today World Book Day came to Chilcote. The year 4 staff dressed up in their ancient Egyptian costumes for the day. This was to show characters from 'Flat Stanley' our class novel.

The children of year 4 dressed up in a range of different costumes. Thank you parents, for your support with the day!

Firstly, the children had a whole-school assembly with a guest speaker, Serena Arthur, who is Birmingham's Young Poet Laureate. The school council asked her some pertinent questions. The children learnt a lot from this experience.

Secondly, the children took part in a circle time where they showed each other their costumes. Then, they explained who they were and why. Also, they explained what their favourite book was and why they liked it.

After that, the children looked at ways to improve their own ability to perform poetry out loud. This was because the main focus of their learning for World Book Day was to recite poetry off by heart and improve poetry performance.  The children recorded ways that they could perform poetry in an outstanding way.

Following this, the children looked at their focus poem for the day. This was 'Chocolate Cake' written by Michael Rosen, who is a phenomenal poet with countless children's poems to his name.

Next, year 4 watched Michael Rosen perform the poem 'Chocolate cake', which was brilliant! Go to his website and you can watch it too! He is an amazing performer of poetry and the children learnt a lot from watching him.

Then, the children picked their favourite part from the poem and practised performing it, just like Michael Rosen. They tried to change their volume, pace, expression and to add in actions with their arms and hands.

Finally, they swapped with year 3 and performed their poems to the children in 3 Beech. Year 3 showed us their  poem 'The Owl and the Pussy Cat' by Edward Lear, and they performed the poem as a class too. Thank you year 3 and well done on your fantastic performance!!!