Summer 2023-2024 

Spring 2023 - 2024 

The English Ambassadors have worked together to improve the use of library across school. The library is more widely used this term than in previous years. We have opened the library to children at lunch time daily; given each class a slot for library time throughout the week and opened the library to children and families on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 3.00-3.45pm, however there is not a large take up for this despite weekly reminders to all children and families.

What have we done this term?

EYFS English Ambassadors 

Our English Ambassadors have been busy supporting the EYFS children to sign up to become our EYFS English Ambassadors. After a tricky process we are proud to announce that Kean and Poppy are joining the team! 

Reading Buddy Classes 

English Ambassadors have paired up every class in school to be 'Reading Buddies' where they will come together throughout the half term to spending time focused on reading and reading activities! These have been shared with staff and teachers are busy coming up with lots of amazing reading activities for us to share! Watch out for our photographs in summer term!

World Book Day 2024 

• We have organised World Book Day for the whole school to enjoy all around 'Aesop's Fables'. We decided on the fables that children were going to learn and read and the activities the children will take part in across school. We all have roles and responsibilities on World Book Day, including choosing the best pieces of writing, taking photographs of the best dressed children and listening to children read fables throughout the day. 

Meet the author 'Maddie Moate' 

• We have organised for all Year 3 - 6 classes to access a meeting with an author. All of KS2 will meet 'Maddie Moate' the author of 'Stuff: Curious Everyday STUFF That Helps Our Planet. The aim of this session is for the children to get to know a little bit more about Maddie Moate and her writing, and to inspire them to read and write more. 

This event will take place on Monday 25^th March, 2 – 2:45pm via Zoom.

• We have introduced Spelling Leagues throughout the school and have created a display central in school for everyone to see. We have been into unit assemblies to encourage children to use Spelling Shed at home and in the classroom. We made sure that children understood the importance of being able to spell and how this will help them within their writing. 

Here is our assembly that we delivered to the whole school. 

During our 'Meet the Author' session, Finley, Frankie and Charlie’s (from year 4) questions were read out. They really enjoyed it the session and can't wait for the next one :) 

Spelling Shed 

We tried to think of other ways to promote the use of Spelling Shed and came together to write to Mrs Cunningham to ask if we could celebrate the 'Top Class' each week in Friday's celebration assembly.

Here is our letter and response that we received. 

Dear Mrs Cunningham,

As English Ambassadors, we have been looking at ways to promote the use of Spelling Shed. At the moment lots of classes are using this platform for helping with their spelling, however some classes need some more encouragement.

We have put our heads together and thought about the best time and place that we could further celebrate the children's efforts to improve their spelling. We understand that Friday Celebration assembly has lots of celebrations within the 30 minutes, however, we were hoping that a quick slide to celebrate the class who wins the 'league' that week could be shown, a little bit like how we celebrate Times Table Rockstars, but for class winners!

Please can you consider our request and let us know if this is something that could be included moving forward?

Thank you,

English Ambassadors

​

Dear English Ambassadors,

Further to my verbal feedback, please accept this as confirmation that we absolutely can include a slide in Friday’s Celebration Assembly to allow us to celebrate which class has won the league every week.

Thank you for continuing to be so passionate about raising the profile of English here at Woodland!

Yours sincerely,

Mrs Cunningham

Headteacher

Since this we have created the league Powerpoint Slide for Assembly too! 

Extreme Reading Competition 

At Woodland Community Primary School, our English Ambassadors are hosting a whole school challenge called ‘Extreme Reading 2024!’ We would like children to take a photo of themselves reading their book in unusual and out-of-the-ordinary places. An example could be on a climbing frame or on a trampoline (children have been asked to be mindful of being safe and check with an adult first).

The more creative – the better! We would love for families to get involved as well, so please feel free to join in. Children can bring in a hard copy of their photographs and give them to Mrs Caron in Meadows class, or post them on the school’s facebook page.

All of the photographs will be added to what we hope will be a fantastic display of our children’s reading, in a wild host of weird and wonderful places.

The closing date for entries will be Friday 10^th May 2024 and winners will be announced week beginning Monday 20^th May 2024.

Autumn 2023 - 2024 

Our English Ambassadors have met 3 times already this year and have worked hard on their actions that they set out in our first meeting. The ambassadors have set out a poetry competition for the whole school that took place on Thursday 9^th November 2023. The ambassadors visited unit assemblies to talk about the competition and got the children excited to take place. The ambassadors have entered all children into the competition through Young Writers and are awaiting to see if any of our Woodland poems have been published. Our ambassadors have also chosen a fantastic poem from each year group and have awarded the winning children with a £5.00 book token. A fantastic display of the children’s poetry is displayed in our corridor.

Our English Ambassadors have begun looking at how to engage our children in reading for pleasure. They are looking at how we can create an area for reading outside. The ambassadors have already ensured that children have time in their class timetable for reading for pleasure, that every class has a class book that they are reading throughout the week and a timetabled slot in the library to read for pleasure. They have talked to children in assemblies, promoting the use of the library at lunchtime and promoting family library sessions on Tuesdays and Wednesdays after school.

Our Ambassadors have also begun promoting Spelling Shed across the school, setting up a league for each class and monitoring the use of Spelling Shed. They have been into assemblies to promote the use of Spelling Shed, showing the children the games and how to interact in the activities both at school and at home. They have now created a display in a shared area around school that other children can access. 

Summer 2022 - 2023 

The English ambassadors have had a significant impact on the English curriculum at school this year. In the most recent pupil voice with our Ambassadors we asked them what they have enjoyed this year and anything different they would like to do next year.

Our English Ambassadors have been working together as a team this term to develop opportunities for children to engage more with their writing and reading curriculum. There have been four English Ambassador Meetings where the children have discussed and planned writing and reading competitions, World Book Day and how we can move forward with our Library.

Within spring term, the English leads and English ambassadors have developed a number of different writing competitions in conjunctions with Young Writers – ‘The Big Green Poetry Machine Writing competition’ and ‘The Diary of…. Writing competition’. All children in school have entered the competitions within school and have the opportunity to involve parents and carers and enter at home. English ambassadors are selecting winners for our school to win prizes and be showcased in school. If any of our children win the external competition they will be published into a book and school will be sent a number of these texts to share in school. Our younger English ambassadors are working on reading competitions to share with school, where children will take part at home and parents and carers will share pictures with the Ambassadors will select winners, for example ‘Extreme reading’, where children will send a picture of them reading in ‘extreme’ places.

World book day was organised and run by our Ambassadors, where the older Ambassadors came up with the theme ‘Twisted Fairy Tales’. The children came up with ideas for all year groups with a reading and writing theme. The day was very successful and is now showcased in our corridor on display.

During English Ambassador Meetings, the children talked about the school library and how lots of children in school are enjoying the library being open at dinnertime. The children discussed other ways for the library to be used including: timetabling the library to be used by all classes at least once a week; opening the library to the school community after school, where children and parents can share books and looking at how children can ‘borrow’ books to bring to their classroom. All ideas were shared with SLT and English leads are currently working on ways to utilise the school library more robustly.