Grove Primary School and Nursery
'Bringing out the best in everyone'
Interactive Bar
English
Performance Poetry
We are currently learning all about performance poetry. There are a number of poets who are exceptional at performing their own work. Michael Rosen is certainly one of them. He is a poet with great expression, both in his intonation but also his facial expressions. We have watched him perform The Youngest as a great example of how he makes his poem a great performance piece.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwcbh7IOdPQ
Benjamin Zephania is also a great performer of his own poetry in a contrasting style to Michael Rosen. Here he is performing I Love My Mother.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lU5IX_UKEjM
We would like to encourage you to share any of your own favourite poems with your child when reading at home. During their reading practice encourage them to think about which words deserve the most emphasis and what sort of tone is most suitable. Practise reading the same poem a few times trying out different ways of adding suitable expression and working out which sounds best. If it is a short poem then working on remembering the poem or parts of it in order for the performance to be more natural rather than being read from the page is desirable. At the end of the unit, children will have the opportunity to perform in the classroom, either their own poem or one which they particularly enjoy.
In Autumn 2 we will be focusing on The Disgusting Sandwich by Gareth Edwards.
This is such a funny story!
In English we will be focusing on different short stories from The Book of Hopes. This is a series of stories written by different people during lock down and is free to access online (https://literacytrust.org.uk/family-zone/9-12/book-hopes/).
The first story we will be focusing on is ‘Daphne and the Doughnuts’ by Jessie Burton.
Summer Reading Challenge
Over the Summer holiday there are many wonderful national Reading Challenges available in which to participate. See the link below for more information about one set up by The Reading Agency.
https://summerreadingchallenge.org.uk/
Alternatively, we have provided below our own reading challenge which we hope might provide a little additional motivation for children to engage in a variety of different reading activities and genres during the Summer break. Most importantly, we want reading to be a pleasurable activity which can be shared and enjoyed with others.