Tower Hill Primary School
Big Book Guidelines
Rationale
Big Books at Tower Hill Primary School are used as a presentation book to show the children’s best pieces of work throughout the year and therefore the work and the presentation should be of the highest standard. These books are sent home as one method of informing parents about the curriculum and the learning journey of their children.
Guidelines – EYFS/KSI
- Children in EYFS and KSI will produce one complete big book each academic year.
- All work should be presented in an A3 ‘scrap book’ format.
- All work must be mounted if appropriate and stuck properly onto the page – without ‘dog ears’ sticking up, which will catch and spoil the work over time.
- When mounting, borders should be kept to a minimum (3-5mm max) in order to focus attention on the children’s work.
- All pages in the big books should have a title and if appropriate an explanation of the work – even over the course of a year, children can forget what inspired their work and then not be able to explain it to parents when sharing the book.
- The work in the books should be a mixture of written, artwork and photographs.
- The work and observation notes in big books should be a reflection of the children’s journey across the whole year.
- Big Books across EYFS and KSI should show a clear progression. There should be a clear distinction between the work and books produced in YR, Y1 and Y2.
- Covers for big books need to be engaging – this could be a photograph of the child/class or a piece of art work produced during the year.
Guidelines – KSII
- All work should be presented on A3 pages – this page can be cream or black and should be appropriate to the work on the page.
- All work must be mounted and stuck properly onto the page – without ‘dog ears’ sticking up, which will catch and spoil the work over time.
- When mounting, borders should be kept to a minimum (3-5mm max) in order to focus attention on the children’s work. Work should be mounted onto black paper. Other colours should only be used for mounting if they complement and enhance the work being mounted.
- All pages in the big books should have a title and if appropriate an explanation of the work – even over the course of a year, children can forget what inspired their work and then not be able to explain it to parents when sharing the book.
- The work in the books should be a mixture of written, artwork and photographs.
- There should be a mixture of hand written and computer published work.
- Work in these books should be checked for spelling errors and other mistakes before being mounted onto a page.
- Only work relevant to the curriculum should be presented in the big books – not party pages!
- Pages should be pre-planned before being stuck down to ensure the highest quality presentation.
- When assembling big books the class teacher should decide on a relevant order for the pages in order to show a child’s progression across the terms/year.
- Children in Year 3 and 4 should create one big book each academic year with a minimum of 30 pages. Children should aim to create at least 10 high quality pages each term.
- Children in Year 5 and 6 should create two big books each academic year. The first will be completed throughout the Autumn and Spring Terms and should have a minimum of 30 pages. The Summer Term big book should have a minimum of 20 high quality pages.
- Big books should not be the same for every child. Children should only publish their best pieces of work. Work in the big books MUST NOT be handwriting practice ie: the whole class should not have identical pieces of writing. The work should be their own.
- Each term, all class teachers will participate in a Key Stage or Staff Meeting to ensure that the high quality of big books is maintained and to ensure that there is a clear progression in the quality of work between year groups.
- If unsure about the presentation of big book pages, class teachers should seek advice from the Display Leader or Headteacher.
