Enrichment
We take every opportunity to promote a love of reading at Ashurst and do so through regular reading events. We take part every year in National Story-Telling Week, National Poetry Day, Summer Reading Challenge, Roald Dahl Day and World Book Day just to name a few. World Book Day is celebrated every year in a variety of ways such as door decorating competitions, dressing up, shelfie selfie competitions, extreme reading, the Big Booky Swap Shop, Booky breakfasts and much more.
We take part in live author events and most recently enjoyed a session with Michael Morpurgo. We participate to regular sessions with authors and illustrators to develop our reading and art skills!
Live events with Authors and illustrators during 'World Book Day' week.
To celebrate World Book Day, March 2021, we engaged with some brilliant sessions delivered by authors and illustrators. We accessed:
Michael Morpurgo – live author event. Children were able to submit questions to the author and listen to how he writes his much-loved books.
World Book Day – Scholastic live events throughout World Book Day/Week promoting love of reading. Children took part in:
‘How to draw with Nicola Slater’ ‘Live nature drawing’ ‘Doodle like Tom Gates’ ‘Draw with Tom Knight’ ‘Write like a Wizard’ ‘BBC Live lesson for World Book Day’ ‘Writing workshop with Lisa Thompson’.
Pupil Voice:
Nursery - "I loved it Jack wrote us a letter and sent us some magic beans!"
Reception – ‘I liked the Mad Hatter’s tea party at snack time. In the story the cake makes you grow but it didn't make me grow.’ ‘I liked dressing up as Willy Wonka and I gave everyone a golden ticket.’
Year 2 – ‘I loved the live events this week! My favourite was drawing the squirrel and the bird with the illustrator from the leaf thief. I like when everybody reads a book at the same time. We can all talk about it. I love it when our teacher reads to us. We loved dressing up, I didn’t realise how many book characters there are.’
Year 3 – ‘Draw with Tom Knight was amazing! I think I now want to be an illustrator when I grow up.’
Year 4 – ‘I really enjoyed the live lesson with Kimberlie Hamilton. She explained how she enjoys reading and writing about animals. Charlotte's Web was a book that got her into reading and writing, we enjoyed that story too. She gave us tips about how to be a writer which will help us when we are writing.’ ‘In Helen Rutter's live lesson, we learned lots of tips about how to make everyone laugh in our writing. I liked her advice that you shouldn't be afraid to make mistakes. She read her story 'The Boy who made everyone laugh' which was funny.’
Year 6 – ‘I really enjoyed the Riddles and Mysteries and writing workshop. It was interesting to hear that the author writes books that are short and for people with dyslexia. I enjoyed hearing how she gets her inspiration from other books. I just loved learning how to write a riddle!’
Pictures of author events coming soon...
Masked reader in EYFS
Pictures and videos coming soon!
Our wonderful 'Stay and read' sessions
We invite our parents and grandparents to our 'Stay and Read' sessions. We have so much fun when our parents, carers and grandparents come in to read with us. We fill the hall with reading books, drinks and cakes, and read together! We have themed 'Stay and Read' sessions when all of the books on offer are based around a theme. For example at Christmas time, teachers gather stories (classics and new) poems and non-fiction texts around the Christmas theme. A favourite it always 'Twas the night before Christmas'.
British Library 'Step inside your story'
'Step inside your story' is a new British Library initiative to celebrate and help promote diversity in children’s books. Ashurst joined children across the UK to create concertina books about themselves, with the aim of showing that anyone can be the author, illustrator or star of a story. The British Library project aims to empower primary school children, strengthen their relationship with books, build confidence in storytelling and illustration, bolster creative literacy skills and encourage reading for pleasure.
At Ashurst, all children took part from Nursery to Year 6. Take a look at some of our amazing books.
Book Bus visits again!
Monday morning, new term and the book bus arrives again! The shelves were packed with exciting new titles and new authors. We were staggered with how many books were sold on the day. We feel this shows the love of reading at our school. Children flocked to buy: Roald Dahl, David Walliams, Jeff Kinley, Julia Donaldson, Michael Morpurgo and many more. We spent just under £1,000 on books. Enjoy your books children and don't forget to recommend any good reads to each other.
Staff 'Shelfie Selfie' to promote love of reading!
National Story Telling Week 2021 - 30th January - 6th February 2021
Stories belong to everyone... what's your story? What will you be telling and where will you be telling it? At Ashurst, we spend National Story Telling week reading, and telling stories. We adapt well known traditional tales, to tell new stories with twists and turns from the original story. We make dens and get cosy and listen to stories being told by our teachers and friends.
Visit the national storytelling website to find out more.
Bringing stories to life through our love of reading!
Watch Amy, Oliver and Libby bring one of their favourite children's stories to life. With Mum and Dad directing and filming, the children walk through the forest re-enacting the story 'We're Going on a Bear Hunt'. Well done to the children, this is truly wonderful and shows your love of reading. We have such creative parents and carers and would love it if others will have a go at re-enacting their favourite stories. Who will you get to be involved in your family? Which book will you select? Please send re-enactments into your class teacher via Seesaw. Let's get creative and share this love of reading across the school.
World Book Day celebrations
We celebrate World Book Day every year.
Take a look at our 'Doorways to learning'. Each class decorated their classroom door in the theme of a favourite book. The door to our Oscar club was most impressive with an additional door which opened up to display a scene from Peter Pan. It even had twinkly lights! Well done to the staff and children for their magnificent efforts.
Our Big Booky Swap Shop
We held a book swap shop as part of our World Book Day celebrations. Children got tickets for donating books which they could then hand in for a new book. There were a few golden tickets, just like Willy Wonker's tickets, which meant prizes! We had lots of fun finding new treasures which we took home to read and share with our families.
'Celebrate an Author Day'
Our wonderful Ashurst Reading Ambassadors planned a special day which they have called 'Celebrate an Author Day'. 'Celebrate an Author Day' took place on Friday 28th May 2021 and is something we now plan to do every year. On the day, we took part in some Authorfy 10 minute writing challenges; challenges set by best-selling authors and illustrators. Follow the link to try some for yourselves:
https://authorfy.com/10minutechallenges/
We were thrilled that many authors got in touch with us after sharing some of our work on Twitter. We were also delighted that some other schools joined our event virtually. Take a look on twitter for more - #sthelensfirstnetworkenglish #Ashurstreaders
Year 1
Year 2
Year 3
Year 4
Year 6
Rights of the Reader!
This was a valuable activity to do with the children. We split into groups and discussed our rights as readers. There were some interesting discussions about the right to feel emotional when reading a book. We talked about books that have made us cry and books that have made us feel happy. There was also some interesting discussions about having opinions on books and authors. We have displayed these posters in every classroom.
What our ex-pupils are reading now
We are really excited about a project we are working on with some of our local Secondary Schools. We have asked our ex-pupils to inspire us by telling us what they love about reading and about what they are reading now. With special thanks to the staff and children at St.Augustine of Canterbury Catholic High School in St.Helens who have worked with us on this project. Have a look at the powerpoint to see the incredible standards in reading our ex-pupils have reached. Children, your 'Ashurst Family' is proud of you! Keep shining!
We read everywhere!
We have boxes filled with equipment to make our playtimes lots of fun. Children asked for books to be included in the boxes. We really do read everywhere!
Summer Reading Challenge 2021
The Summer Reading Challenge is finally here! We are so looking forward to hearing about your summer reading journey. This is a wonderful opportunity to keep reading over the summer and it can be done by reading hard copies of books or by reading on a device. There is something for everyone to read; you will be spoiled for choice! This year St.Helens Library are opening the challenge up to Year 6 first, from Monday 5th July 2021. Then, from Monday 19th July, the Summer Reading Challenge will be opened up to all other year groups. There are 2 videos below. The first is for KS2 and the second video is aimed at KS1. Take a look and get signed up!
We are looking forward to celebrating your achievements in September 2021. Good luck everybody and enjoy!
For children in Years 3, 4, 5 and 6 please view the video below. Remember that for Year 6, the challenge starts from Monday 5th July 2021, and for the rest of KS2, the challenge starts from Monday 19th July 2021.
For children in Year 1 and 2 and younger children, please view the video below. Remember that for children in KS1 and younger, the Summer Reading Challenge starts from Monday 19th July 2021.
Summer Reading Challenge 2020!
All you need to do is join the 'Silly Squad' website, get parent/carer permission to complete an online registration and then read 6 books (or more) of your choice with collectable incentives and rewards. You will receive a certificate for completing the challenge.
We can't wait to hear about your summer reading. Good luck and have lots of fun! All the details you need are below.
We can't wait for Summer Reading Challenge 2021!
