Wednesday 17 June 2015


Double Whammy!

Oops….. I forgot to post yesterday’s blog - forgive me. It’s been posted today so do spend a few minutes having a read - it’s a nice one…if I do say so myself!
I’m watching from the office as the Early Years equipment continues to be secured in its new home and we can’t wait until it’s all settled and the children can use it.
I thought I’d focus today’s blog on literary heritage - a key concept that we are exploring as a school.  The 2014 curriculum says we must “appreciate our rich and varied literary heritage”.  So we ask, what does ‘our’ actually mean - we left this to the staff and while some people read it as ‘our-British’ others read it as ‘our-personal’ and who’s to say whose right?  Then there’s the question…. What is a heritage books? Is it a classic - Bronte, Austen, Shakespeare? If so…does a modern classic count?
We decided to give the staff the opportunity to name their classes for next year with literary heritage in mind and there’s a real variety in the names chosen. Some teachers have chosen authors that have written modern classics, while others have ventured further back in time, some have picked authors who are close to their hearts and others have chosen authors they think the children will enjoy hearing in the new year. We look forward to sharing our new class names with you in the very near future. To confirm, at St Jude’s we see Literary Heritage as a term for the literature which has been passed down to us from the best authors who wrote in English in the past. It would include great British writers like Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dahl and Blyton, but also writers in English from the Commonwealth countries and the United States, as well as the works in English of authors like Conrad and Nabokov for whom English was a second language.
Izzy Lewis

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