Dream Big READ! org.uk

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1 Dream Big READ! Welcome to our summer 2016 reading newsletter. Our children have been fantastic this year, taking part in so many bookrelated events, with more to come over the summer. We are aiming to have a school full of enthusiastic and excited readers, with everybody, adults and children, being able to talk about books that they have enjoyed reading or listening to this year. The big event this summer, is the Summer Reading Challenge at all the local libraries and across the country. This year it is linked to the late Roald Dahl, as part of the celebrations for his 100th birthday. Your child can join up online NOW and also register at any library and start choosing books org.uk They only have to read any 6 library books and, as long as they keep track of them, when you take them back to the library they get stickers and prizes for reading! On the website, there are book games, book recommendations and even two competitions, to keep your children busy reading and creating over the summer. This is all provided for FREE!!! In addition, this year the reading agency have teamed up with the Roald Dahl Museum in Great Missenden to offer children taking part in the challenge free entry over the weekend. Just take your joining folder with you. Offer ends on 4 September For full information please visit the Roald Dahl Museum website.

2 Roald Dahl Week July 2016 Last week our pupils took part in a most exciting, fizzbungling week of fun; immersed in the world of Roald Dahl through a variety of activities. The school was abuzz with pupils experiencing the BFG s Cave in our sensory room, the magic and wonder of listening to and reading stories, explosive science with George and his Marvellous Medicine, learning to sketch the Quentin Blake way, visits from Roald Dahl characters, an amazing drama workshop from the Freshwater Theatre Company and many, many more wonderful and exciting treats. Our aims were to engage pupils in learning about and celebrating Roald Dahl s incredible life through a variety of subjects; to introduce the children to the Roald Dahl themed Summer Reading Challenge and to link this to their transition from their current class to their new class. We are delighted to say that the feedback from pupils and staff has been overwhelming. 2J and 4T have shared a snapshot of their week below: 2J Both the children and teachers in Year 2 had a wonderful Roald Dahl week! One of the highlights was creating our very own marvellous medicine. Everyone got extremely messy as we mixed a number of different special ingredients together to create a volcanic explosion! The children also thoroughly enjoyed the visit from the Freshwater Theatre Company as they acted out different scenes from Roald Dahl s books and learnt new facts about the famous author. They also visited the incredible BFG s cave where they had different sensory experiences and discussed their future dreams and aspirations. The writing focus for the week was based on the book called The Magic Finger. The children loved reading the story; hearing about the different characters and discussing the moral. They also came up with some slightly weird and wonderful ideas for their own magic finger power. This acted as a platform for them to create their own magic finger story where they wrote some interesting and detailed stories full of humour and suspense. Overall it was a truly terrific week which has hopefully inspired many of the children to take on the challenge of completing the Big Friendly Read competition which takes place over the summer at your local library. 4T The book we read in 4T was arguably one of the naughtiest of Roald Dahl s books, The Twits! Throughout the week, we became engrossed in the plotting and scheming of Mr and Mrs Twit. There were many a discussion as to which prank was the most terrible and finally it was agreed that making Mr Twit eat a plateful of worms was the worst! Early on Tuesday morning, 4T found that the Roly Poly bird had laid 5 eggs in the classroom. To our surprise, they were made from ice! Our task was to see what the quickest way to melt the egg was. Many of the class tried dunking, pouring or dripping warm water onto it but the most inventive method was to reflect the sunlight onto the egg using mirrors! As part of the Freshwater Theatre session, 4T enjoyed acting out various Roald Dahl stories. In class we put on our imaginary beards and wart-covered, long noses to become Mr and Mrs Twit creating new pranks involving a wig and some glue! A highlight of the week was looking at the various characters that Roald Dahl created and the images and illustrations that were featured in many of his books. We created small sketches of characters from Roald Dahl, which we drew in the style of the famous illustrator, Quentin Blake. Take a look at the following photos to see what the rest of the school was getting up to

3 The Freshwater Theatre Company Roald Dahl Drama Workshops George's Explosive Science Quentin Blake Art Teachers in Character

4 Book of the Year Hillingdon Schools Library Service (SLS) organises three Book of the Year awards. These awards are Hillingdon s Secondary, Primary and Picture Book of the Year. The winner is announced during a Finale event, which is sponsored by General Mills. One of our wonderful pupils in Year 6 has shared their experience The Hillingdon Book of the Year was an amazing experience. It included a lot of work, but it was all worth it in the end. In this piece of writing I am going to tell you about the rehearsals and the day itself. First, in class we chose the book we were going to do our performance about. The choices were: The Deadly Seven, Diamonds and Daggers, Not as we know it, The Middle of Nowhere and The Binding. They were all great books but one stood out to us in particular, The Deadly Seven. Five children were chosen to do Hillingdon Book of the Year. (Kieran, Yaseer, Mumtaaz, Zakiya and Esha) We all thought that The Deadly Seven would be an excellent film, so we decided to make a movie trailer. Yaseer was Nelson, Kieran was the dad, Esha was the mum, Mumtaaz was Doody and Zakiya was Uncle Pogo. The pieces from the book we decided to include were Nelson dressing up as a female Hollywood film director because it would be hilarious, being sent to stay with his mad and silly Uncle Pogo, his parents leaving and a mini interview with the children who had watched the movie. Mrs Davidson managed to get her friend-who is a professional actor to do a voiceover for us. We used some of the songs mentioned in the book such as: Seven Nation Army and Call Me Al. A wig, coat, suitcase and sunglasses were used in the transformation of Yaseer into a female Hollywood film director. The rehearsals were fun and we all excited for the big day but before that we had to perform to the whole of key stage two. The play went very smoothly, after all our rehearsals, and everyone applauded loudly. When the day itself arrived, we were all nervous but Mrs Davidson and Mrs Bell assured us we were going to be fine. We caught the bus to get to the civic centre, when we arrived there we were shown to our seats. First we were allowed to have a try out on the stage to work out our places for our performance. Then it started; a lot of schools did the Deadly Seven. There were 11 schools that showed up. We were in the second half, so after we ate our snacks it was our turn. Everything went as planned both teachers said we had done the school proud. After the performances had finished a lady came in to talk about the summer reading challenge. After that an author came in and we sang some songs together. He then read us his latest book we all enjoyed it and found it very funny. Then it was the results came; over all we came second-we were all very pleased. Then we caught the bus home. It inspired us to read other books.

5 Book Week News, March 2016 From Monday 29th February to Friday 4th March, we had an exciting week exploring books and stories to celebrate World Book Day on the 3rd. Our focus in class was the works of William Shakespeare, as this year is a national celebration of 450 years since his death. To find out about lots of national events. Our New Books In our Monday assemblies, each class was given some new books connected to Shakespeare. These will be staying in our book corners. Some year groups had picture books based on a Shakespeare story, some had collections of stories, some had plays and some even had the story of Star Wars written in Shakespearean English!! We all spent the week learning about the stories and language connected to our books, producing some stunning writing and artwork, which is on display around the school. Years 3-5 even did some work in German connected to Shakespeare!! Visit: Author Visit Once again we had an amazing visit from the author Margaret Bateson-Hill. She told stories across the school and even let Years 5 and 6 have a sneak preview of her next book. Fancy Dress Thank you for all your efforts at book character fancy dress. We loved some of the very clever ideas and simple ways of putting a costume together. In the afternoon of Tuesday 1st March, we had 35 different books being read by adults around the school. The children had all chosen which book they wanted to listen to and, after being sorted in the hall at 2pm, we all spent a peaceful 40 minutes listening to stories and taking part in some book activities. Look at all the different places we were reading! Year 6 working on Romeo and Juliet. Witches potions, compound nouns and character descriptions in German.