Reading 

This year we are having a BIG push on reading! Reading is something we all strongly believe is a vital foundation to a child’s learning. Around school we have created lots of lovely areas promoting books full of rich vocabulary to help enhance our children. Each class has a dedicated reading area, where staff have worked hard to make it engaging and exciting. We have also revamped our junior library to make it purposeful and enriching. We have also purchased lots of new books with the help of some lovely parents and friends of Richmond Hill. Here are a few pictures from across our school to show you what we’ve been up to

Communication skills are vital for both success and confidence in many areas of life and  we want our pupils to develop the ability to express themselves clearly and effectively. We want to facilitate a love of books, story, rhyme and song and encourage pupils to foster their developing skills and enthusiasm in an environment where this is skillfully modelled and opportunities across the curriculum are provided. We recognise that both listening and speaking are important when communicating and opportunities to practise and develop these skills are provided. We want our pupils to be able to offer their opinions and reason articulately whilst also being able to debate a topic or viewpoint and disagree respectfully.

World Poetry Day 2025 

We all learnt about the features of some different types of poetry for World Poetry Day, where we focussed on the different language features used by the authors. We then wrote our own version in our classes and then spent some time reading them aloud to each other, to promote and enhance our oracy skills.

Class Wordless Books

All classes have a wordless book on their reading spine to promote oracy skills. These units focus on thought provioking lessons and activities and promote lots of opportunity discussion-based activities.

World Book Day 2025

We celebrated World Book Day in 2025 with the theme 'Traditional Tales with a twist.' Throughout the day, each class took part in a range of reading-based activities linked to the theme. Our older children had the opportunity to share stories with our younger members of Richmond Hill and the whole school took part in a sponsored Readathon throughout the month of March! We also invited parents into school to spend some time in classes reading with children and taking part in the activities! 

World Nursery Rhyme Week 2025 

Our Early Years Foundation Stage children enjoyed celebrating World Nursery Rhyme Week, taking part in activities centred around a specific rhyme each day and learning the words to each rhyme. At Richmond Hill we value the importance of introducing nursery rhymes and understand that they can support the development of early language skills, such as encouraging active listening and introducing new vocabulary. 

World Nursery Rhyme Week 2023

Our Early Years Foundation Stage children enjoyed celebrating World Nursery Rhyme Week, taking part in activities centred around a specific rhyme each day and learning the words to each rhyme. At Richmond Hill we value the importance of introducing nursery rhymes and understand that they can support the development of early language skills, such as encouraging active listening and introducing new vocabulary.