2025 – 2026 Highlights: Junior School English

Our girls demonstrated excellent progress in English this academic year. In Reception, they built vital confidence in early phonics and independent writing. They engaged thoroughly with the adventures of Supertato, which stimulated their creative storytelling and allowed them to practise active sounding-out skills through writing “Wanted” posters.

Enthusiasm for writing has also blossomed in Year 1. Following a memorable trip to London’s Postal Museum, the girls posted letters home. They dived into Mini Grey’s Traction Man to practise sequencing, speech bubbles and descriptions for an original narrative. Through Emily Gravett’s Meerkat Mail, they mastered questions, postcards and five-senses descriptions. Later, they linked English with Science to create plant fact files and shared these proudly with the Reception classes.

In Year 2, writing stamina has reached impressive heights. The girls recreated the Great Fire of London using rich sensory vocabulary for dramatic diary entries. They channelled Roald Dahl when writing unique versions of George’s Marvellous Medicine, mixing ingredients using powerful imperative verbs. Finally, inspired by The Robot and the Bluebird, they built physical birds and wrote character profiles with expanded noun phrases to bring them to life.

We are immensely proud of the incredible vocabulary growth and sheer joy of writing demonstrated across both year groups this year.

Over the course of this academic year, the Junior School girls embarked on an extraordinary literary voyage across Key Stage 2. From the myths of Ancient Greece to the streets of Victorian London, our English curriculum challenged perspectives, fostered deep empathy and unleashed creative flair whilst sharpening technical precision.

In Year 3, the girls travelled through time and dived into magical realms. Creative and theatrical skills took centre stage as they enthusiastically reenacted The Ancient Egypt Sleepover for their class assembly. They channelled their inner scientists to research arachnids, crafting detailed reports about spiders, before stepping into the shoes of archaeologist Howard Carter to pen vivid historical diary entries. Finally, an extensive study of Charlotte’s Web sharpened their comprehension and expanded their grammar knowledge to conclude a brilliant year.

Year 4 girls pushed the boundaries of their creativity whilst mastering complex grammar. Their journey began with the mysterious world of Varjak Paw, inspiring narrative chapters, graphic novels and suspenseful playscripts. Real-world drama followed with The Man Who Walked Between the Towers, which saw the girls report on Philippe Petit’s high-wire feat as journalists. Imagination took over during their study of The Lone Robot, inspiring creative storytelling, whilst Michael Morpurgo’s My Friend Walter inspired empathetic diary entries and formal letter writing.

In Year 5, the girls immersed themselves in emotionally mature texts, elevating their grammatical precision. They began with the Victorian world of Street Child, composing evocative diary entries, before turning to Skellig to master suspense writing and dramatic playscripts. Adventure took centre stage with The Girl Who Stole an Elephant, inspiring perspective-shifted retellings and fast-paced chase scenes. Developing their inner journalists, the girls deployed indirect speech, experimented with headline puns and perfected the 5 Ws in lead paragraphs, whilst confidently introducing colons and semi-colons to link sophisticated clauses.

Finally, our Year 6 girls immersed themselves in writing themed on ancient myths, twentieth-century history and groundbreaking science. The journey began in Ancient Greece with The Adventures of Odysseus, where the girls explored the Homeric Hymns to write original epic myths. Moving to World War II, they put themselves in the shoes of a wartime evacuee to pen moving personal narratives, whilst mastering a persuasive, vintage tone to script and record Dig for Victory radio advertisements. Concluding the year, they explored The Origin of Species, virtually retracing Darwin’s voyage to the Galapagos Islands to design their own perfectly adapted creatures and compile sophisticated non-chronological reports.