Author: Y. McBlain

National Literacy Network Meeting – update on QAMSO developments

Yvonne McBlain attended the latest National Literacy Network meeting on the morning of 12th November 2018. The newly expanded literacy team were introduced as: Helen Fairlie and Paul Morgan – senior development officers, Lesley Lennon and Kirsten Hume, seconded education officers. The aims of the meeting are below with notes taken for your information (Click here to view the full presentation):

  1. Provide an update on the national picture and the work of the Education Scotland Literacy Team
  2. To introduce the First Minister’s Reading Challenge self-evaluation toolkit
  3. Heighten awareness of the key messages within “A National Strategy for School Libraries in Scotland 2018-2023 and “How good is our school library?”
  4. Create opportunities for networking and sharing of practice

Paul Morgan – QAMSO update:

  • The national QAMSO training programme began in session 2016-17
  • Purposes: to develop understanding of standards in literacy and numeracy; to develop understanding of the moderation process (click for information about the Moderation Cycle in NIH); to develop/ensure that assessment is integrated into holistic planning; to provide an additional forum for sharing of practice; to improve the rigour of the data about learning in literacy and numeracy which is available to practitioners and thereby support valid, reliable teacher judgements
  • NIF – this work mainly relates to the Assessment of Children’s Progress, but links to other drivers, and ultimately to Building the Curriculum 5 which should still be regarded as a live and relevant reference document.
  • Feedback from existing Quality Assurance and Moderation Support Officers was used to re-design the 2018-19 training of new QAMSOs as a one-year development programme. Initial training sessions take place this month for Numeracy, Reading, Writing and the newly included element of Talking and Listening. There will be a further 2 rounds of training this session and the whole programme covers: the teaching/learning/moderation process including high quality assessment; ensuring the quality and relevant of evidence; identifying achievement of a level.
  • This review also inspired more effective linkage between 4th level and national qualifications. Training events have been arranged to enable QAMSO moderation between levels.
  • QAMSO can now gain Professional Recognition by demonstrating that they have attended relevant meetings/training, collected moderated evidence and shared locally and/or nationally, planned/led regional moderation events, submitted a moderated portfolio of evidence and/or contributed to the Understanding Standards support bank. Click here to visit this developing SQA site where teachers can register to look at examples of NQ5, Higher and Advanced Higher studies.
  • Senior leaders and assessment co-ordinators at school and local authority level  should be working with QAMSOs to provide moderation events in their authority and/or via their Regional Collaborative.
  • Existing QAMS officers evaluated their participation so far as extremely valuable

Paul closed his update with a reminder that the Benchmark documents for Literacy and Numeracy should be used as per the guidance received by every education colleague via the 2016 Education Statement from the Chief HMIE i.e. the experiences and outcomes should be used for planning of learning, and the benchmarks support our integration of relevant assessment, our evaluation and moderation of learning and ultimately contribute to teacher judgement regarding achievement of a level.

 

Progressing and Assessing Group Discussion

Falkirk Children’s Services colleagues can now access a collection of resources which support the progression and assessment of group discussion for primary 4, primary 7 and S2 pupils (or pupils requiring the support or challenge these represent). These resources are stored here in our Literacy and English Glow group (log in required). They take the form of a task sheet, an assessor guide(teaching guidance) and any prompt cards or activity resources required. Click here to see the task sheet for S 2 New Law which asks pupils to discuss how laws affect them and to invent a new law which would benefit young people. Click here to see the prompt images for the same context at second level (primary 7) which help pupils relate laws to their own actions everyday. Lastly click here to see the assessor guidance for the primary 7 version.

The task cards offer a simple reminder for pupils of some of the key skills involved in group discussion.

  The group discussion task resources use an interesting and stimulating range of contexts which link to various subject areas across the curriculum. For example, primary 4 can discuss which invention has made the most impact on society, which aspect of the design of their trainers is most important, or whether children today have the right amount of freedom. Primary 7 could discuss transition issues regarding their imminent move to secondary school, what games/things to pack in case of wet weather during a caravanning holiday, or  which well-known person is most likely to inspire and motivate people their age. S 2 contexts include who should be protected in an asteroid shelter in the event of a catastrophic asteroid collision with Earth, what do we really need to be happy and healthy, or the effects of computer games on young people.

These contexts lend themselves to observing the application of group discussion skills within an unfamiliar context, but could also provide discussion foci which offer breadth or challenge within Talking and Listening – Literacy. The activities combine skills and knowledge from a range of Experiences and Outcomes within Listening and Talking in a holistic way.

We are very grateful to Bernadette Kelly, principal teacher at St Margaret’s PS for sharing these resources. Bernadette was an assessor during the last Scottish Survey for Literacy and Numeracy, and Education Scotland gave the assessors permission to share these materials. Yvonne McBlain has stored 5 sets of resources for primary 4, primary 7 and secondary 2 within in Glow. Find the resources in the SSLN Resources Folder – scroll down until visible on the left hand side of the page. Any schools or teachers with queries about additional materials of this nature should contact yvonne.mcblain@falkirk.gov.uk .

Sharing Practice – developing Literacy Café at St Margaret’s Primary School

In her role as principal teacher, Bernadette Kelly has been working with pupils, colleagues and parents in St Margaret’s PS to develop reading skills using Literacy Café approaches. Click here to look at the Cafe “menu” which defines the strategies pupils can use to progress their: C for comprehension, A for accuracy, F for fluency, and E for expand vocabulary. The comprehension strategies developed are:

  1. Prior Knowledge
  2. Metalinguistics
  3. Visualisation
  4. Inference
  5. Main Ideas
  6. Summarising/paraphrasing

The menu and routines which form part of this approach are designed to help pupils gradually become more independent in their progression and application of these reading and literacy skills. The approach is compatible with the aims of Curriculum for Excellence and should contribute to raising attainment by having the potential to help close related gaps in literacy skill and/or attainment. Click here to view short videos where the children explain their use of Literacy Café.

In addition, the menu relates very well to the Falkirk Literacy & English Progression Pathways (glow login required). Examine the links in the key skills and progression statements of the reading organisers below:

 

Graeme High School Pupils Value a Fresh Start Approach to Reading

Pupils offered the following comments about being in the Fresh Start reading class at Graeme High School:
At first I thought it was like being a primary pupil but now I am glad because now I can read like everyone else.
When I came here I was scared because I didn’t know how to read that much. So then I sound talk the word and then I know the word.
 I love reading.
I was scared because all my friends could read and I couldn’t. I thought I was dumb, stupid because I couldn’t read. I hated myself. People said I was born silly and it got to me. I didn’t want to come to high school because people would know BUT everyone liked me and I came to this class and now I can read. Don’t let people get you down because you are going to be amazing when you get older and the bullies are nothing.
What does it take to get pupils to talk about reading like this? Caroline Harper, faculty head of English at Graeme HS shares the process and impact in her report below.
PEF Literacy – Read Write Inc
We introduced Fresh Start at Graeme High School through finding out about strong results from colleagues in Dundee. We decided to introduce it to S1, S2 and S3 in the first year as the potential for this to transform pupils’ life chances was considerable. Pupils who had gaps in their learning which needed to be filled were selected for the scheme.
It was a highly structured course. All English, Support for Learning teachers and Support for Learning staff were trained in the methodology. There was substantial investment in resources. In addition, we benefited from two development days, when a trainer came in to observe us teaching and offer feedback about how effectively we were implementing the course.
Read Write Inc assessments
Pupils were assessed every six weeks using the Read Write Inc assessment. This involved recognising ‘speed sounds’ correctly and reading a short passage. There were seven passages and pupils had to read them with few errors and in a reasonable time (very slow reading makes comprehension unlikely).
All pupils made progress in these assessments. Records have been kept and every pupil has made some progress, many completing the 33 module course in fewer than 33 weeks.
Closing the Gap evidence
Although we could see from the assessments that pupils could now read passages that they could not read a few weeks ago, we did not know whether we had ‘closed the gap’ as their peers would also have been improving their reading skills in the course of the session. To check this, we used the Test of Word Reading Efficiency, an index based test (100 representing average performance) to allow us to see whether they had improved relative to their peers. For example, a score of 70 (poor) followed by one of 80 (below average) six months later, would show that they had improved relative to their peers.
We tested their progress over a six month interval using the Test of Word Reading Efficiency. It was in two parts – the Sight Word Efficiency test where pupils had to recognise and read words as quickly as they could and the Phonemic Decoding Efficiency test where pupils had to use their phonemic knowledge to read a list of non-words. The raw scores could then be correlated with their age, which would give a scaled score. This scaled score allowed us to see where they were in relation to their peers. This meant that any improvement was an improvement relative to their peers – which meant that we had made some progress in ‘closing the gap’.
 S2 group
According to the form a margin of difference in the two scaled scores of more than 10 meant that we could be 95% confident that the improvement was not down to chance. However, a difference of less than 5 could be attributed to chance. A difference of 6 gave a confidence measure of 70%. A difference of 5 gave a confidence measure of 60%.
For 8 out of 13 pupils in this group, the difference in the phonemics score was 5 or greater and for two it was over 10.
S3 group   
For two pupils, the results were positive with a gain of 6 and 7 points in the phonemic decoding test. This gives a confidence level of 80% and 85% respectively that this improvement was not due to chance but represented an improvement in their skills. Of the two pupils who showed significant improvement, one had made a year’s improvement and the other three year’s improvement in decoding skills.
S1 group
This was a large group of 23 pupils. For seven of these pupils there was a clear improvement in either their phonemics or their sight word recognition or both.
Reading Age improvements
The TOWRE-2 authors state that they are confident about the reliability of the scaled scores in proving improved performance but are less convinced about their reading age data. However, it is helpful to know that, for pupils at this stage, a difference of 6 in the scaled score usually equates to a year’s progress (in six months) and a 7 point difference usually equates to three year’s progress (in six months).
When asked to capture simple words which described their experience in the Fresh Start Class, pupils said:
‘never give up’, ‘it was fun’, ‘fascinated’, ‘excited’, ‘extraordinary’, ‘amazing’, ‘happy’, ‘grateful,’ ‘awesome’

Interesting Update from the last National Literacy Network Meeting

Yvonne McBlain, Yvonne Manning and Carol Turnbull (FCS Literacy team) attended the National Literacy Network Meeting on 19th March 2018. Helen Fairlie, Development Officer, Education Scotland arranged and hosted the event which consisted of:

  • Sharing of early messages – an overview of Literacy nationally

Helen Fairlie is in the process of analysing available HMIE inspection reports and other data to compile her report on how pupils and schools are currently progressing with Literacy. An extract of her slide presentation can be accessed here – Helen stressed that this is interim data about pupil achievement of literacy within CfE, and that her analysis of inspection reports is not complete.

  • Conversations about Language and Literacy:

Click on the snapshot above of Dr Sarah McGeown’s blog to discover more about how she is linking research and practice. Her work focuses on early reading, motivation and engagement in reading, gender differences and children and young people’s reading choices.

Dr Lynne Duncan   is researching pre-school language and emergent literacy and reading among bilingual learners, as well as literacy difficulties. Click the snapshot of the Improving Children’s Literacy website below to explore their work further.

Click here to view their presentation from the event.

 

 

 

Sharing of developments by Dundee City Council

Gail Stirling and Nicola McDonald from Dundee City Council shared their development of literacy at all levels. Click here to view their presentation and hear how the process they are supporting is already impacting on learner attainment.

  • Sharing of Literacy priorities in each local authority area

Each local authority submitted a presentation slide showing their current priorities for literacy – there was time to discuss these in the afternoon.

Watch out for Interesting Update 2 with more info about the afternoon.

 

Shaping the Falkirk Literacy Strategy

On Friday 24th November the literacy leads from each cluster of schools across the Falkirk area met to discuss and shape our new Children’s Service literacy strategy. We spoke in detail about the work which had been done between this meeting and our last and agreed that:

  1. The literacy strategy should be visual – Sketchnote format would be ideal.
  2. It should link to related materials and be a genuine “One Stop Shop” which cuts down on workload and gives necessary information as succinctly as possible – we will hyperlink as much as is useful.
  3. We need to make effective use of technology to make the strategy as engaging as possible – images, video and sound work best – we will gather video, examples of literacy practice, teachers and early years officers talking about what works for them

During the meeting we identified tasks such as creating a Falkirk literacy hashtag so everyone in our authority can find literacy work easily using Twitter. We settled on #FLIT, and have already started using this.

Each cluster literacy lead person will use this blog to post about developments in literacy within their own school and cluster – watch this space!

Our final priority task during the meeting was to structure our Literacy OneNote document to make it as useful as possible for practitioners across the authority. Yvonne Manning and Yvonne McBlain will work on this document using the criteria above to guide them.

Welcome to our “Refreshed” Literacy Blog

We hope you like the refreshed  look of our Falkirk Children’s Services Literacy Blog?

Carol Turnbull, team manager with responsibility for literacy, Yvonne Manning, Yvonne McBlain and our new team of “Literacy Leaders” from every cluster, are also refreshing our Falkirk Children’s Services Literacy Strategy. The two Yvonnes are consulting with parents, partners and pupils across the authority to get their input into the strategy. Their task is to have the final document ready by January 2018.

Literacy Leaders adapted the initial draft strategy ideas prepared by the Yvonnes, and these are being developed as we speak. The document itself will be streamlined into a one-page poster with links to relevant key materials, and capable of being emailed and/or printed. There will also be a Falkirk Literacy Strategy OneNote document which can be accessed using your Glow login details. This will be used as a “One-Stop Shop” for depositing key literacy materials and documents. These resources will be complemented by this blog, where we will share news and developments, and  examples of teaching and learning in literacy, languages and English. The literacy leads will use the blog to update us on the development of literacy work in each cluster too.

Watch this space for further developments, but if you’d like to know more, or if you can help make our new strategy even better, please contact carol.turnbull@falkirk.gov.uk , yvonne.manning@falkirk.gov.uk or yvonne.mcblain@falkirk.gov.uk  .