We are lucky to have a very diverse school community in Our Lady’s Primary School. We are often asked questions by parents of bilingual children / children with English as an Additional Language how they can support their child’s literacy development at home. The bilingual support service, now part of the Accessibility and Inclusion team in Dundee, have produced useful guidance for supporting bilingual pupils. See below for this guidance:

English Nursery-Primary

You can also access this advice in other languages (Arabic, Latvian, Lithuanian, Mandarin, Polish, Portuguese, Russian and Urdu) by visiting https://www.dundeecity.gov.uk/service-area/children-and-families-service/education/bilingual-pupils-support-service .

Parentzone Scotland have also written some very useful guidance: https://education.gov.scot/parentzone/additional-support/specific-support-needs/learning-environment/english-as-an-additional-language#

*Above all, remember that your home language is important too. It is part of your traditions and your social & cultural heritage and identity.*

You can access dual language children’s books from the local library service. They also have stories in other languages. Here at Our Lady’s, we have a selection of books in other languages / dual language books which our learners can borrow to take home.

The BBC’S “500 words” competition for 2020 is now open. Since 2011, the BBC have been running this exciting competition, which encourages children and young people to get excited about reading and writing. Almost 1 million stories have been submitted since the competition was first launched!

It’s very easy to enter the competition. The BBC’s website states:

“All entrants must pen an original story, no more than 500 words in length, and submit it online. It can be about ANYTHING you want – space-ships, grannies, insects, time travel. The list is endless!

Stories are judged anonymously, without regard to grammar, punctuation or spelling. The competition culminates in a broadcast extravaganza of live music and sensational story-telling every summer, at a special venue.”

Full details of the competition can be found on the BBC website, including details on how to enter and Frequently Asked Questions. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00rfvk1

It would be very exciting to have some entries from Our Lady’s pupils. Closing date 27th February 2020. Children aged 5 – 13 can take part in this competition.

If you need support or advice to help your child with talking and listening, the NHS Tayside Children and Young People’s Speech and Language Therapy Service have lots of tips and guidance on their website. You will find these by visiting: https://www.nhstayside.scot.nhs.uk/OurServicesA-Z/ChildrenandYoungPeoplesSpeechandLanguageTherapy/PROD_318266/index.htm

They have sorted advice into the following categories:

• Attention and Listening.
• Expressive Language.
• Speech Sounds.
• Understanding.
• Stammering.
• Voice.
• Bilingual.
• Interaction.
• Working Memory.

The service also provide an advice line for parents. The below poster explains how to access this service:

 ADVICE LINE

There are also a number of ways in which you can support your child to develop their listening and talking skills at home. Some top tips include:

• Find time at home to sit together and talk about your day. Meal times are a good time to do this. Ensure there is “tech-free” time, where there is an opportunity for you to talk with your child free of distractions such as tablets, phones, computers and T.Vs.
• Play a range of games together. Family board games encourage communication, whilst role-playing with your child (e.g. playing shops) helps your child to develop a range of social communication skills.
• Give your child time when talking. They sometimes need time to process a question and think of their answer. Thinking time supports them with this and boosts confidence.
• Share stories and books together. Make time to share books and create opportunities for your child to read aloud and share their learning, such as songs, rhymes and poems they have learned.
• Give your child opportunities to express their own opinions and share their own feelings. Watch the news and discuss your opinions of the stories and any questions the reports raise. Newsround produce stories and news clips suitable for children. Look out for their daily news round-up. https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround .
• Opportunities to chat with family and friends are valuable learning opportunities, especially for social communication skills. The chance to chat on the telephone is also a nice way to develop these skills.
• Talk about new words / vocabulary as you encounter them. Challenge your child to use these words throughout the day in the right context.
• Use photo albums, scrap books and special objects to talk about special memories together.
• Time to play and socialise with friends is also very important. Your child can learn and develop their social communication skills well with peers around the same age, and great fun always involves different levels of communication!

Parents often ask “How do I support my child with spelling at home?”. It can be quite tricky to think of engaging ways to help your child to learn spelling words, which ultimately supports and improves their writing skills.

Firstly, we find the following “Spelling Menu” to offer a nice variety of activities to practise spelling words:

Spelling-Menu

The Parent Club website also offers advice and games for supporting spelling.

https://www.parentclub.scot/articles/how-help-kids-their-spelling-homework

To add some variety and engagement, technology can also be used for spelling practice. The Spelling Frame website (https://spellingframe.co.uk/) allows you to input a list of spelling words which it will then create a range of games with. Our Lady’s also currently have a Sumdog Spelling subscription for P3 – P7 pupils. Pupils should log into www.sumdog.com with their log-in details to access the spelling games. Please speak to your child’s class teacher if your child requires a reminder of their log-in details.

 

When looking at spelling, it is essential that your child does not copy the word. This does not help them to learn to spell the word as children look at individual letters, rather than remembering what the word looked like.

They should :

1. Look at the word
2. Say the word
3. Cover the word
4. Write the word
5. Check the word. Is it correct?

This ensures children have to think about the word. This process means that they are more likely to remember it.

As well as our school guides, which we have shared for parents in this blog, there are a number of other sources of valuable advice and guidance to help you with supporting your child’s reading at home.

Education Scotland have produced helpful guidance on encouraging good reading habits at home:

The Early Years guidance can be found here: https://www.education.gov.scot/parentzone/Documents/ReadingTips_EarlyYearsEN.pdf

The Primary School guidance can be found here: https://www.education.gov.scot/parentzone/Documents/ReadingTips_PrimaryEN.pdf

The Secondary School guidance can be found here: https://www.education.gov.scot/parentzone/Documents/ReadingTips_SecondaryEN.pdf

 

The Scottish Book Trust have a range of resources to support reading at home, including the First Minister’s Reading Challenge. Access the following web links:

https://www.readingchallenge.scot/about/information-parents-and-carers

https://www.scottishbooktrust.com/learning-resources/encouraging-reading-top-tips-for-parents

 

We have compiled a list of good websites to support literacy at home. The list contains an explanation of how the website can be used to support your child’s literacy development.

• Oxford Owl: The Oxford Owl website contains a good ebook library which is free to use to support reading for pleasure at home.

          https://www.oxfordowl.co.uk/for-home/find-a-book/library-page/

• Topmarks: The Topmarks site contains a range of fun literacy games for children.

          https://www.topmarks.co.uk/english-games

• Britannica Kids Online Dictionary: A useful tool for looking up word meanings.

          https://kids.britannica.com/kids/browse/dictionary

• Jackanory Junior: Contains clips of celebrities / actors reading stories. The programme is designed to stimulate an interest in reading.

          https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007t9wg/clips

• Sumdog Spelling: Lots of fun spelling games!

https://www.sumdog.com/

• Countdown Word Game: Play “Countdown” at home. Create words and develop vocabulary in a fun way.

http://happysoft.org.uk/countdown/wordgame.php

• Starfall: Starfall has phonics and reading games which are mainly aimed at early reading levels.

https://www.starfall.com

• Turtle Diary: A range of engaging literacy games.

https://www.turtlediary.com/games/language-arts.html

• Spelling Frame: Allows you to input a list of spelling words and practise these through fun, interactive games.

https://spellingframe.co.uk

• Free Rice game: The UN World Food Program site offers a great vocabulary-building game for  children. Every time a question is answered correctly, FreeRice donates ten grains of rice to hungry people.

https://freerice.com/

• Digital books: The following links can be used to access a range of audio and digital books for free.

https://www.storynory.com/

http://en.childrenslibrary.org/

https://www.storyplace.org/

https://www.storylineonline.net/

https://ngexplorer.cengage.com/ngyoungexplorer/index.html

https://magicblox.com/

As well as encouraging our learners to regularly visit their local library to access a wide range of reading, we would recommend parents and learners consider trying the free ebooks borrowing service in Dundee libraries.

The following link explains more about the scheme:

http://www.leisureandculturedundee.com/library/e-reading