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Bishop Pursglove C of E Primary School
Reach Higher, Think Deeper, Love Wider
English
Talking Tuesday!
At Bishop Pursglove, we are developing the oracy skills of our wonderful pupils. To open this focus on speaking and listening, we are encouraging all children to present a short talk about one of their interests to the whole class, and maybe to the whole school. We have had many fascinating talks so far, such as British Monarchs and how to look after kittens. Please see the attached letter and encourage your child to give it a go. It's time to shine!
Carnegie Illustration Award
During Summer term 2, each class is looking at the finalists in the Carnegie Award for illustration. This is a yearly event in which some of the best picture books for young children enter a competition. Each class will discuss the illustrations and vote for their favourite. The winners will be announced at a ceremony on June 19th, and we will see if the judges agree with us! Please see the web link below for further information.
Author, Philip Kavvadias, visited school. 16/5/25
Author, Philip Kavvadias, visited school to end SATs week with a treat. He spoke to the children about the love of reading and how he writes his own books. He asked for the opinion of the children for his illustrations and plot ideas for his next book, which was very interactive and fun. The session ended with the students asking him questions. The staff and Philip were very impressed with the listening and questioning skills of the children! Please see the letter below for a link to buy one of Philip's books if you so wish.
Thank you all for a fabulous World Book Day!
We had a wonderful World Book Day this year. Thank you to everyone for coming to school in your cosy reading outfits and entering the book character paper plate competition. It was wonderful to share the first session with parents and carers and we hope you had fun sharing a story and a craft with your children and their friends. Throughout the day we visited a book trail in the woods to enjoy reading outdoors and visited our local library. The theme of our celebrations was 'Reading Your Own Way' and reading for pleasure, we hope this day stimulated the love of reading in all our fabulous pupils. Happy reading everyone!
Thank you to everyone for an amazing National Storytelling Week, 3rd-9th February
During this week we let the students take charge during story time and they picked and read stories to their peers. We had a fabulous week and the children read beautifully and enthusiastically. Well done! Keep reading everyone!
Reading
Reading is a high priority at BPS as it underpins progress in all subjects. We want children to develop a lifelong love of reading and to feel inspired by a range of texts and genres. Children bring home high quality reading books from the Big Cat scheme, with interesting, relevant content across a range of genres. These are matched to their ability and the content is appropriate to each child's level. As well as this, they have access to two school libraries.
In school, children are read to by their teachers and enjoy a wide range of texts through Class Novels and Guided Reading. The local community have been involved in the purchase of many of these books to try and provide windows into the experiences of others and mirrors to help children view themselves and their families in the books they are reading. We see books as a fantastic way to broaden horizons, and use them as a way to enrich discussions on equality, human rights, the environment, diversity, disability and other topics relevant to today's changing world.
Early Readers are pupils at the early stages of their journey in learning to read. Our Early Readers use phonic decoding as their reading approach, identifying the sounds in words and blending them to read the words. We track children’s progress in reading carefully and children of any age can be identified as Early Readers. Our Early Readers read books carefully matched to their phonics knowledge and are supported to rapidly gain the phonics knowledge and skills to become fluent independent readers.
Phonics is taught daily in Reception and Year 1, using 'Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised'. More information can be found on their 'For Parents' page, including useful videos on how to pronounce each sound, and ways you can help at home.
Writing
Children cover a range of different genres for writing through our Cornerstones topics. Grammar and punctuation are matched by class teachers to the different genres and children are expected to showcase this learning in their independent writing. Children can achieve mastery of different genres by revisiting them over their time at BPS.
Spelling
In Reception and Year 1, the spellings of common and exception words and phonics based spelling patterns are taught through Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised. Spellings are taught using the Spelling Shed scheme from Years 2-6. Year 2 common exception words are taught in addition to the Spelling Shed lessons.
Spelling games are set through Spelling Shed to be practised as homework each week.