March 2021 Issue 5

Reading Diary Dates

➢ Author Visit - Tom Palmer 23rd April

➢ May – Share a Story Month

➢ Elmer Day 29th May

➢ Empathy Day 10th June 2021

Author Visit – Tom Palmer

Friday April 23rd is Shakespeare’s birthday and so is a suitable day to have an author visit our

school. Tom Palmer is an established author with a large repertoire of books, and it is so exciting to

have him visit our school. As Tom himself admits, he wasn’t keen on reading when he was young.

His mum was worried about him because he was struggling at school. She encouraged him to read

about football in newspapers, magazines and books. Gradually he came to love books.

Tom has written 54 books for children, including stories about spies, detectives, history, ghosts, war,

pilots, rugby, friendship, parents and football; there is something for everybody.

During Tom’s visit to St. Patrick’s, you can have any of his books signed, but the book we are selling

via school is “D-Day Dog”. You can read the first chapter here:

https://www.tompalmer.co.uk/wpcontent/uploads/2019/04/D-Day-Dog-Chapter-1.pdf

Based on the real-life story of paratrooper Emile Corteil and his canine companion Glen, “D-Day

Dog” is an amazing, sensitive and interesting exploration of war stories from WW2, the Falklands

and Syria are woven together in this fascinating and fantastic book! “D-Day Dog” was voted the

overall winner at the 2020 Children’s Book Awards which is run by the wonderful Federation of

Children’s Book Groups. The fact that over 100,000 children nominate, longlist, shortlist and choose

the winners makes it all the more obvious why we have chosen to promote this book at St. Patricks.

If you wish to have your own copy to pick up during Tom’s visit, make sure you place your order on

Scopay before Tuesday 20th April.

You can find out more about Tom and his work by visiting his website here:

https://tompalmer.co.uk/

You can also borrow Tom’s books from the library or purchase from his Amazon page:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tom-Palmer/e/B005H8A1JK/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1

Reception Class Reading

In Reception class we enjoyed reading Goldilocks and the Three Bears, our favourite part was

when Goldilocks was in such a hurry to run away, she forgot to put her shoes on! We were able to

act out and retell the story and then sequence pictures in the correct order. This then led to us

having a go at writing and retelling the story. We also read Goldilocks and the Three Teddy Bears

and compared the two stories.

We then looked at non-fiction texts about real bears and found out lots of different facts.

We have been reading lots of phase 3

sounds and tricky words and now the

weather is a bit brighter we have

enjoyed scavenger hunts in our

phonics lessons.

We have just started listening to some of Tom Palmer’s stories in

preparation for his visit. We read and enjoyed the story, Real

Cricket and now we can’t wait to have a go at playing cricket!

Year 1 Reading

We loved dressing up for

World Book Day as our

favourite book characters

– here are a selection of

the creative costumes!

We had fun doing our

book scavenger hunt,

sharing our favourite

stories and playing The

Masked Reader guessing

game.

In English we have been reading Jack and the

Beanstalk and have been doing vocabulary

hunts for words from the text. It has been fun

combining our Foris school learning with

reading.

During the lockdown a

member of staff read a

book to the Year 1 and

EYFS class every day.

The children enjoyed

the tales and we

hopefully raised the

profile of the

importance of

listening to stories.

We have improved our phase 5

reading skills in phonics sessions

with lots of exciting word reading

games inside and out!

Since we have

returned to school we

have been making our

own story maps based

on the story of Jack

and the Beanstalk. We

have used time words

and fabulous

illustrations.

Year 1 have enjoyed listening to

books written by the author

Tom Palmer. We will be looking

at more of Tom’s books before

his visit on the 23rd April 2021.

Year 2 Reading

In English, we have been reading Mossop’s Last Chance, part of the Mudpuddle Farm series. We

used what we have learnt from what we have read to create our own farms and role play using

props.

Our class novel is 52 Storey Treehouse. The class love it so much that a lot of

them have gone out and bought their own copies to read at home!

We have had a reading focus on

Tom Palmer ready for the

upcoming visit. We have read First

Football Game and used the text

to provide evidence for our

answers.

We have been encouraging the children to read

books outside of their home readers, including non-

fiction texts like First News- a challenge they have

gladly accepted!

Year 3 Reading

When we returned to school, we began

reading this Tom Palmer book in preparation

for our author visit in April. The children also

enjoyed a reading a PowerPoint all about Tom

Palmer and are excited for his visit.

We have also started Stig of the Dump as part

of our English Unit and the children studied

the early chapters during guided read.

The children loved this new story from the

bestselling children’s author Tom Fletcher

during lockdown. We enjoyed listening to

Tom read the opening on Youtube first. Lots

of the children bought the book so that they

could follow along and many parents said

how they enjoyed listening to their children

laugh as they listened to the daily chapters.

THE DANGER GANG SYNOPSIS….

The electrifying new adventure from bestselling author of The Christmasaurus and The Creakers, Tom Fletcher!

Franky can't wait to move to his new town - although he wishes he didn't have to leave his best friend Dani behind.

But everything changes after the storm, when strange green lightning and powerful thunder crash down on the town. From that night on, the kids who live on Franky's street start to change. One by one, they become a little odd. A little unusual. A little... magical.

Franky's always wanted to be part of an amazing gang - just like his hero, super-spy Zack Danger! And soon, he realises that there's real danger in store for himself and his new friends.

And so the Danger Gang is born...

They enjoyed the illustrations on every page too!

Year 3 Reading

We have enjoyed weekly guided reading tasks based on a few books such as The BFG, Be Safe

on the Internet (which was linked to Internet Safety Day) and Rosa Parks. The latter was a firm

favourite and the children sent many videos chatting through the questions with their parents.

Here are a couple of responses below.

During lockdown, as well as reading activities linked to their English topics and other cross-curricular

reading, the children read a daily chapter on Purple Mash and completed quizzes linked to the story. They

also uploaded videos of themselves reading their own books. I am so proud of the children’s efforts and

it’s been lovely to see so many of them really engaging in books. Some of their favourites have been the

Harry Potter, David Walliams and Roald Dahl books, Beast Quest series (Matthew is on Series 8!) and

Jacqueline Wilson books (Caitlin loves borrowing these from my own class library!) Keep up the great

reading Year 3!

Year 4 Reading

Whilst Year 4 have been learning from home, they have completed lots of reading of their own.

IT has been so lovely to see videos of them all reading their favourite books, in their best

storyteller voices.

This half term, we have been enjoying lots of different

stories. We have continued with the series of Tom

McLaughlin’s Accidental books and completed ‘The

Accidental Secret Agent’, so we have just started to

read ‘The Accidental President’ which we will continue

to read next term. We are all loving these books, as

they are very interesting and make us want to know

what will happen next, as well as making us laugh lots!

We started this term reading lots of different books,

which we have done lots of different work on; such

as writing our adventure stories, taking inspiration

from Gulliver’s Travels. We have also continued to

read and complete work about ‘The Boy at the Back

of the Class’, the children are loving this book and

are always so eager to read more of it.

Year 5 Reading

Year 5’s class novel this term was

‘Rooftoppers’ by Katherine Rundell.

We enjoyed hearing all about the

adventures of Sophie and Mateo

and some of the children used their

World Book Day token to pick up

the recently published prequel,

‘Skysteppers’.

Our focus in our English

lessons has been on

Science Fiction and we

have read a variety of short

stories and extracts from

novels to inspire our own

writing.

In our guided reading sessions we have been

reading ‘After the War’ by Tom Palmer. The

children have been captivated by the story and

have already generated a lot of questions for

the author when he visits school next term.

Year 6 Reading

We have just finished reading the book Wonder

as a whole class. During remote learning, we

continued this unit of work with staff and

children taking turns reading a chapter a day

and uploading this for the class to follow. After

finishing the book, we planned and write an

alternative ending to wonder using all skills we

have been developing.

One of the activities the children really

enjoyed was writing the speech the August

would have made. We don’t get to find out

what his speech was in the book so we had

to use evidence from the text inform our

ideas. Here are some examples of what the

children produced: