English

English - Highlights of the Term

Another busy term for the Beechwood English Department. Thank you to all our pupils who have engaged in a wide range of activities and initiatives across the School. Senior Department pupils in both Year 7 and Top Form were treated to a live theatre performance at School when Redheart Theatre came to perform Gothic Tales (Top Form) and Mr Owen’s Pocketbook (Year 7). You can read more about these two performances below:

Mr Owen’s Pocketbook

On Remembrance Day this year, Year 7 pupils were treated to a one man show exploring Wilfred Owen’s experience of the First World War through his poetry and the poetry of his contemporaries. “Mr Owen’s Pocket Book” performed by acclaimed actor Rupert Mason from Redheart Theatre Company, tells the story of an officer travelling from Allied HQ to the Western Front, one week before the Armistice. On this journey, he discovers the pocket book of a young lieutenant killed that day, and, through hearing the contents of the book, the audience is taken on a journey through the poetry of Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon and other war poets. This was a powerful performance, which thoroughly engaged Beechwood’s Year 7 pupils and staff alike. Once the performance had finished, pupils had a chance to ask Rupert plenty of questions both about his career and his favourite plays and poems, and his thoughts on the poetry of Wilfred Owen and other poets of the Great War.

Gothic Tales

On Halloween itself, Rupert Mason came to Beechwood to perform two thrilling Gothic tales for his Top Form audience; “The Red Room” by HG Wells, and “The Tell Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe. Pupils had previously studied these stories in their English lessons, so it was wonderful for them to see the tales brought to life on stage. ‘The Red Room’ tells the tale of a naive young man who spends the night in the Red Room at Lorraine Castle. Many believe the Red Room to be haunted but this does not faze the narrator until he starts to sense a presence in the room and his candlelight is extinguished. He takes a fall in the night, and when he wakes with concussion the following morning, he understands what truly haunts the room: Fear itself. In the story, the old man with whom the narrator lives has a clouded, pale, blue “vulture-like” eye. It distresses the narrator so much so that he plots to murder the old man. For seven nights, the narrator opens the door of the old man’s room to shine a sliver of light from his lantern onto the evil eye. On the eighth night, death is in the air. Has he finally done the deed? Pupils and staff all thoroughly enjoyed the performance and there were plenty of spine-chilling moments, which had us on the edge of our seats. It was a spooktacular Halloween treat!

This term, year 7 pupils began to practise their Shakespearean monologues for the Performing Shakespeare Competition 2023. They will be learning and perfecting them over Christmas, ready for the school final in January. We can’t wait to watch their performances! Here are some of our Top Form in action....

National Poetry Day

On 6 October, the English Department celebrated National Poetry Day. This year’s theme was the environment.

During the course of the day, pupils worked on identifying great lines from famous poems and unscrambling clue words to reveal well-known poets. Pupils were then invited to write a simile or metaphor poem to describe the Earth and their comparisons were really quite impressive with beautiful use of language. In English lessons, pupils were also given the opportunity to experiment with haiku poetry. Haiku is a traditional, Japanese from of poetry with a very fixed structure. The poem has to be three lines in length. The first line has to have 5 syllables, the second line has to have 7 syllables, and the third line has to have 5 syllables. Haikus are usually about nature or some aspect of geography. Pupils in Year 7 wrote haikus on the topic of the environment and engaged thoughtfully with the theme

Ice caps are melting Becoming a slushy mess Oh no polar bears! Methane in the air Carbon levels are rising Oh no polar bears! Polar bears will die Please help us reach net zero Save the polar bears! We love polar bears Seals are suffering as well Long live polar bears! In Indonesia Their habitats are destroyed Komodo dragons

In green Borneo Trees chopped down by hunters Dead orang-utans

In bustling China No bamboo for the pandas They are dying now In hot Africa Rhinos hunted for their horns They’re nearly extinct Forty years from now Children will live in a world Made from our choices

Don’t throw that away Do the right thing and bin it Help change our climate

Littering is bad So horrid and annoying Why would you do this

Pupils from Year 3 to Year 6(c) were introduced to a new reading scheme called Accelerated Reader. As a school community we have read a staggering 14,262,721 words this term

House

Stewart Saunders Sebright Tudor

Points

510.6 468.0

357.6

292.2

Who will be victorious in the Lent Term and will we have our first Millionaire reader?

SATIPS Handwriting Competition 2022

Over the years, Beechwood has enjoyed considerable success in the SATIPS National Handwriting Competition, and this year again was no exception! At the beginning of this term, we found out that Beechwood had been awarded joint first place in the SATIPS Handwriting Competition. You can find out more about the competition here

Well done to all who took part; but a particular well done to Lila N and Amelia B, who came joint first and second in the age 7 category; to Charlotte R, who came second in the age 11 category; and also to 2022 Top Form leavers Maggie D and Kai Y-P, who came first and second in the age 12 category.

Read for Good 2022

Pupils from Woodlands to Top Form took part in this year’s Read for Good Readathon and raised £2231.30 for charity. Read for Good’s mission is to improve the outcomes for all children in the UK by encouraging and enabling children to develop a love of reading. The Readathon Sponsored Read has been running in schools across the UK since 1984. It was, and remains, a simple idea. Pupils are motivated to read what they love, and at the same time raise money to help seriously ill children, and they earn free book vouchers for their school at the same time. The hospital programme provides brand-new, carefully chosen books and regular professional storyteller sessions to the UK’s 30 major children’s hospitals. Read for Good’s specially made, colourful mobile bookcases can travel right up to a child’s bedside, offering an enticing display of lovely new books to read and often keep for ever. Read for Good’s service supports seriously ill children’s disrupted learning, and gives them and their families precious distraction and comfort at a time when it’s needed the most.

Beechwood is delighted to have been able to support this charity once more - thank you to everyone for their support. You can read more about the work of Read for Good here.

Scrooge’s Diaries by Year 6

Year 6 have been getting creative with their work on A Christmas Carol, producing some truly excellent diary entries by Scrooge. Not only have they managed to capture Scrooge’s character and tone in these pieces of work, but they also look fabulous, having been aged with tea. You can see more examples of the pupils’ work here

A Christmas Tree Speaks

Year 5 pupils took inspiration from the Christmas tree in the Entrance Hall to pen these lovely poems - you can read more here:

Having trouble with an international criminal? Being terrorised by an out-of-control alien species? Crazed cyborg stealing your precious and ever increasing-in-value home energy? Fear not, Year 4 may just have the answer! As part of our English unit looking at character descriptions, Year 4 have been designing our very own superheroes. Such heroes as The Flame, Moon Knight, Glitch and The Infinity have been carefully created thinking about attributes and typical features of superheroes. Children considered special powers, weaknesses, origins, outfits and much more to ensure you can sleep easy tonight.

You can read more about our superheroes here

Year 4 Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf? Most of us, apparently. For as long as stories and folktales have been told, the wolf has appeared as a villain or monstrous foe. Year 4 took this enduring image and used it to inspire their character descriptions involving an encounter with a wolf. The children worked hard to consider what well-chosen adjectives and phrases would work best to describe a wolf’s movement, appearance and sound as well as the atmosphere created in its presence. You can read more here

Christmas Holiday Reading

We hope that you have enjoyed reading books recommended on the Beechwood Holiday Reading Lists for Woodlands, Junior Middle and Senior Departments, - don’t forget to share with the School Librarians which books you have enjoyed this Christmas!