Symondsbury Reads

A whole page dedicated to all the ways we are loving our reading at Symondsbury!  Check back soon as we keep adding what we have been doing!

Creative Writing Winners

Poetry Club put their imaginations to work, again, by inventing their own potions.  They had to decide what the potion would do, and what the ingredients are... being as imaginative and creative as possible.  There were some wonderful ideas and we entered them into the National Federation of Children's Book Group's competition.

It was judged by Carrie Sellon, author of Pizza Pete and the Perilous Potions.

We were thrilled that we had 2 winners amongst us!  Romy won the 5-7years category and Molly came runner up in the 8-11years category.  They both won a pile of books and the feedback from Carrie was lovely to read!  Well done!

Romy's Potion...

 

Molly's Potion

 

 

  

 

 A Feast of Stories Competition Winners – The Federation of Children's Book Groups (fcbg.org.uk)

 

Poetry Slam - 24th June 2024 

Some of Class 3 travelled to Thorners School today to take part in West Dorset Schools Collaboration Poetry Slam.   It was a great afternoon, a true celebration of poetry!  We were treated to some performance poetry and songs, by Martin Maudsley, local poet and storyteller.  Class 3 children performed their poems with style and we were so proud of them.  The children also thoroughly enjoyed watching all the other school's perform their poems.  Such a range of poems, performed in different styles.  

We performed:

In the Tree's Defence by AF Harold

Willow by Robert Macfarlane

This Plastic is Not Fantastic by Sue Lancaster

 

  

 

 Author Zoom - 21st May 2024

Have you seen the Wildsmith books by Liz Flanagan...?  Class 3 and 4 thoroughly enjoyed their virtual visit with Liz today.  

We have the books in school and there is a queue of children wanting to read them!  We love it when author's inspire children to read like this!

 

 

Scholastic Book Fair - April 2024

We have had the Book Fair at school this week.  It has been wonderful to hear the buzz about books in the playground.  Children have been talking about books and recommending books to their friends.

Thank you so much for all your support as we have been able to claim over £150 worth of free books as a reward.

   

         Look at all the books going into classrooms!

Results Are In...

Our judging panel was thrilled to hear that Am I Made of Stardust? by Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock won the Royal Society of Education's Young Person's Book Prize this year.

It wasn't our highest scoring book but we did enjoy it!  We were proud to receive certificates, recognising our participation in the judging process for this prestigious prize, in assembly.

 

Author Zoom - 8th March

Following on from all the book action yesterday, Class 3 and 4 were lucky to have a Zoom session with Frances Moloney, author of City of Horses and Mystery of the Disappearing Mum.

She talked to us about how she got into being an author and her inspiration for stories.  We got to ask her lots of questions about her writing and books.

We loved her message of anyone can be a writer and are keen to take up her advice of reading lots of books to help with ideas.

 

 World Book Day - 7th March 2024

The children enjoyed listening to a range of their teachers' favourite stories as part of our World Book Day celebrations.  They also listened to some familiar voices in 'The Masked Reader' and loved sharing their story spoons with all their favourite characters! All of this whilst wearing PJs - what a great way to enjoy World Book Day!

 

These are just a few of the wonderful characters.  It was so lovely to hear them all guessing who the spoons were!

  

Class 1 Library Visit - 20th February 2023 

Class 1 had a brilliant time at the library today.  Claire and Elaine gave us a tour and we found out that the building used to be Bridport Fire Station!  We were sat where the engines used to be parked!  We also found out about all the different sorts of books are in the library, not just children's books but information books, audio books and maps too.  We loved having Claire and Elaine read us a story.  I think the best bit was having lots of time to explore all the wonderful books.  

  

Re-opening of our Information Book Library Section 

We have sorted, reorganised, updated titles and re-catologued all our non-fiction/information books and this section of the library now ready for business.  Our committed librarians are now opening the library up for visitors every Monday lunchtime.  Children can come and read, look at books or talk about books.  They all have new library numbers so can take these books home too.  It was lovely to see the library so full of children finding books on topics they were interested in like WW2 or specific animals.  Our poetry section was also popular!  

     

 

 

Royal Society Young People's Book Prize - Judging Panel

Our results are in!  Symondsbury have completed their judging and submitted our results.  We now have to wait until March to see if everyone else agreed with us... which book will be the winner...?!

                                                     

 

We were thrilled to be accepted onto the panel to take part in this again this year.  There are some wonderful books and we can't wait to get judging!  We have just had our first session and already the children are enthused and excited about what they are reading.  We can't wait to read all these great science books!

   

 

Mr Dilly's Festive Author Cracker - 7th December 2023

A fun morning participating in this Zoom with lots of fantastic authors.  We loved hearing from authors M G Leonard, Sophie Anderson and Mel Taylor-Bessent.

Author Zoom - 27th November 2023

We attended a live author Zoom with Sarah Tagholm and Binny Talib who wrote and illustrated 'Sam Francisco King of the Disco'.  Sarah and Binny got us moving by listening to and dancing to the different styles of music in the story.  We also had the chance to do a cat draw along with Binny!  The children were really enthusiastic and hearing from a real author and illustrator really made the book come alive for them.

      

Just a small selection of Class 1's cat pictures...

       

We tweeted our fantastic pictures and Binny and Sarah replied saying ...

 

       

 

Poetry Club 2023

 Mrs Wills has been running a Poetry Club throughout the Autumn Term.  It has been led very much by the children's interests.  We have read lots of poems and talked about why we enjoyed them.  We have written our own poems to enter into a few competitions.  It was so much fun to choose poems to give our teachers and friends on National Poetry Day.  We even wrote some Christmas poems and are going to put them in our Christmas Countdown Advent Calendar for everyone to enjoy every day!

We were thrilled to hear that, as a school, our entries had been selected as runners up in the 'Whale' competition run by Peter's Books.  The children had to write a 6 lined funny poem about a whale and we won the beautiful poetry book, 'A Whale of a Time'.  Here are our wonderful entries:

 

Wishy washy

Having fun,

Absolutely amazing,

Lovely gliding,

Energetic

Splashy, sploshy

 

Funny flippers flap along,

Gracefully gliding through the splashy sea,

Colossal bodies happily pirouette with their singing friends,

Munch, munch, they consume little herrings,

Crashing waves around them fall in the sea,

Up to the surface they go to shoot water high.

 

Wonderfully wet whale

Herring for dinner, herring for lunch

A whale that's floating on the surface, 

Large, colossal, huge and

Enormous, an amazing blowhole

Squirting out water in the sea.

 

Whales are gliding happily,

Whilst they dance, they are colossal,

Height and width,

They eat a lot of fish a day,

Crashing around,

Like my brother having a tantrum every day

 

 

We also had another winner in our midst.  One member of our Poetry Club was chosen as a winner for her Autumn Days poem by www.poetryzone.co.uk  She won a copy of Joshua Siegal's brilliant poetry book, 'Who Let the Words Out'.

   

Congratulations to all our winners and keep writing poetry!

 

National Poetry Day - 5th October 2023

Poetry Club really went to town with sharing their love of poetry for this special day.  They spent their club time researching poems that they thought the teachers, other members of staff and their friends would like.  They were then extra sneaky and arrived at school early on the day and stuck these poems up around school and left them on people's desks.  There was a buzz around the school and everyone enjoyed listening to lots of poems!

Here are a couple of Poetry Club's favourites... 

For our wonderful TA's and Teachers of course...

 

 Summer Reading Challenge 2023

Today it was Bridport Library's turn to visit us!  They came to introduce the Summer Reading Challenge.  Everyone is really excited about getting reading this Summer! 

Library Visit - Class 3 - 7th July 

 

 Poetry Slam with AF Harold - 3rd July 2023

We were so lucky to meet AF Harold at our Collaboration Poetry Slam.  He performed some of his amazing poems and talked to us about writing poems.  We then had the chance to perform our poems for him.  He was so complimentary and gave us really positive feedback after each performance.  He even signed a copy of his book for us!  We were so proud of all our performance poets today, a really great afternoon out! 

  

 

Poetry Slam - 19th June 2023

 When we heard we were invited to a Poetry Slam with the other Collaboration schools and AF Harold, we decided we must have our very own Symondsbury Poetry Slam to decide who would represent us to go forward.

We had a fantastic afternoon with all children performing a poem in the Tithe Barn.  Class 1 performed the very funny 'Daddy Fell into A Pond' poem as a class, one of their favourites that really makes them laugh.  Class 2, 3 and 4 worked in groups to perform the poems they had chosen.  Alex, our Chair of Governors, and Nicky, from The Bookshop in Bridport, judged our performers and had a very hard time choosing 3 acts to represent us. 

Library Visit - Class 4 - 9th June 2023

 

 

Library Visit - Year 1&2 - 2nd/9th May 2023

Another library visit where children found out how they could become members and visit the library and borrow books.  They really enjoyed the story that Alice and Claire read to them and loved being able to explore and choose their own books to read.

  

 

Gary Fyles - Author Visit - 21st April 2023

We were lucky to have a real author visit school and run a workshop with each class.  He encouraged all the children to be creative and was really inspiring with his growth mindset message of 'Think Big' and 'Aim High'.

 

 

World Poetry Day - 21st March 2023

Just the Poetry Elves delivering poetry gifts today!  The children have enjoyed listening to lots of different poems.

     

 

Class 1 - Library Visit - 28th March 2023

Class 1 took a trip to Bridport Library today.  The librarians read us some stories and took us on a tour, explaining how it all works.  We had some time to look at all the books too.  Alice and Claire from the library explained how we could all have a library card so we could borrow our own books.  It was fantastic to hear that lots of children then visited the library to get their own cards and are now using the library regularly.

     

 

World Book Day - 22nd March 2023

We love learning new words at Symondsbury so for World Book Day we dressed up as different words!  It was so much fun to guess what different people chose to be.  We all chose a new book from the World Book Day books.

  Class one dressed up as their words!  We loved 'scaly' and 'focus'!

 

 Royal Society Young People's Book Prize - Judging Panel

We have been selected to join a panel that judges a selection of new science themed non-fiction books.  The books look amazing and we can't wait to get started!

 

If the World Were 100 People by Jackie McCann and Aaron Cushley was selected as the overall winner of the prize which was one of our favourites too... it was so hard to choose!