Each year, as part of Workstream 6 of the Literacy Strategy, a report is prepared relating to Workstream 1 – ‘Embed active literacy in every establishment’. These reports can be viewed here:
Please click this link to access Active Literacy Strategy July 2013 for Session 2012 – 2013.
Please click this link Active Literacy Strategy July 2014 to access ‘Active Literacy Update’ for Session 2013 – 2014.
For further information, please contact literacy@falkirk.gov.uk
Pupils from Nethermains Primary School have been discovering their inner poets by using autumn as their inspiration and developing their active literacy skills by creating some exciting new poetry. They worked co-operatively to create a list of exciting vocabulary and ventured on a walk in their local wooded area as a stimulus for their writing.
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Bonnybridge Primary School have been working really hard with their active literacy and wanted to share some of their photographs and videos.
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Pupils from St. Bernadette’s R.C.P.S. in Falkirk have demonstrated their knowledge and understanding of the six reading comprehension strategies at a recent C.P.D. event. The two P7 pupils eloquently described each of the strategies and treated the audience to both an i-movie trailer of a book they have been studying and a rap.
The audience included a range of teachers, including Education Scotland and the Literacy Development Officer from Highland Council who said “The two P7 children from the school were excellent. It highlighted to me that the years of training they’ve had in developing their Higher Order Thinking Skills has allowed them to apply their knowledge, understanding and skills across the curriculum – a real treasure.”
The audience really enjoyed the presentation and later went onto Twitter to tweet:
Here are some extracts from the presentation, prepared by the pupils:
A local Falkirk pupil has recently been successful with her entry to Citv’s ‘Share a Story’ competition. The national competition asked pupils to produce a story board which would be made into a short animation aired on Citv in October 2014. Leah was successful and in August went down to Manchester to the ITV studios where she saw her storyboard come to life.
This is what Leah had to say about the experience:
“I like writing and reading so whenever there is a writing competition I give it a go. I like having a longer time to think about the best awesome things I can think of.
I like drawing as well so it was quite nice getting to draw out my story on a storyboard.
When I won my hands were actually shaking. I didn’t really take it in until we got to the TV studio 2 months later.
First we got to look round the studios, to see the set of one of the cartoons and do the weather report. then we got down to business and we got to see the start of our animation. We got to talk to the graphic designers about how we wanted our characters to look. My favourite thing was doing the VoiceOver to my story as the man from Scooby Doo taught us to do voices for our characters.
If I could say one thing about writing to teachers it would be to give us some flexibility now and then so we can use our imagination. We might have a really good idea you never hear about because we never had the opportunity to write it. Lots of people have very good ideas but we don’t always get to use them if we have to stick to a certain topic.”
Well done Leah, we are all very proud of you and cannot wait for this to be aired in October!
Primary One Literacy Assessment & Action Resource (POLAAR)
The Primary One Literacy Assessment & Action Resource, aimed at helping P1 teachers and support staff to identify learners at risk of developing later difficulties with their reading and writing, is now published on the Education Scotland website. The resource was developed collaboratively by educational psychology professional bodies, the Scottish Government and Education Scotland and is based on research commissioned by the Scottish Government and undertaken by Professor Keith Topping on the key factors which underpin successful literacy development in learners. POLAAR meets a commitment made in the SG’s Literacy Action Plan to encourage all local authorities to introduce personalised (literacy) assessments and diagnosis at P1, and to encourage practitioners to be aware of and act on this assessment information.
Click here to access Literacy Appraisal and Action in the Early Years summary document.
Falkirk Council is proud to be featured on the Scottish Government’s website – ‘Engaging with Families’. It demonstrates one of the ways Falkirk are working with families (Work stream 4) in pursuit of ‘zero tolerance to illiteracy’. We are delighted to be featured here with a good practice story from Kinneil Primary School and Nursery Class in Bo’ness.
The ‘engaging with families’ website contains lots of ideas and advice in relation to raising attainment and closing the inequity gap. It explores a range of ways in which families can support children to achieve their potential. The ‘Learning at Home’ section demonstrates how Falkirk Council have developed our ‘Learning to Achieve’ policy to support learners in the community. Part of this strategy includes interactive literacy and numeracy workshops where parents are given practical suggestions for how they can support their child’s learning at home.
For further information, please contact your child’s school to see if they are hosting an active literacy and/ or active numeracy workshop.
Members of the Curriculum Support Team from Falkirk Council were delighted to be invited along to a recent Literacy across Learning event at Graeme High School. After receiving input on ‘Active Literacy’, class teachers from across a wide range of subjects showcased a range of learning opportunities with an active literacy focus.
The Curriculum Support Team were treated to a carousel of activities where pupils rotated in a cooperative learning style session, around twelve tables of activities. The activities were initially introduced by subject teachers, and after one rotation, older pupils led the learning.
There was an exciting variety of activities working on literacy skills such as metalinguistics, note-taking, visualisation, summarising, paraphrasing, Big Writing, effective connectives and vocabulary building.
The morning was enjoyed by all. Thanks Graeme High for the invitation and sharing this super learning opportunity with us.
Over the past few months Lesley Haston, class teacher at Maddiston Primary School in Falkirk, has been working closely with her colleague Laura Fowlie on a Mairi Hedderwick-inspired project as part of the Scottish Book Trust Authors Live Teacher Champions Programme.
Lesley and Laura’s P2 pupils were inspired by the Katie Morag series.
The children started this project by watching the Author’s Live event with Katie Morag author, Mairi Hedderwick.
They discussed if any of the children had read these books before or seen the new TV programme. They read a different Katie Morag story every week.
In groups the children wrote about the characters from Katie Morag using adjectives and we displayed these on the wall. They came up with words such as toerag, mischievous, cheeky, old, hardworking, etc
Exploring Scottish culture through play
The children had a Scottish themed play afternoon where they had opportunities to choose a variety of different activities. They could build the New Pier out of construction, they curled paper to make Alecina’s sheep’s coat, they wrote down the ingredients for haggis, played in the water with boats and ferries, listened to Scottish music, decorated thistles and created Plasticine Nessies.
Learning about picture book construction
They wanted the children to learn more about the production of picture books in preparation for them producing their own. They had a visit from illustrator and print maker Cate James; she explained the picture book making process and took the children through the storyboarding process. The children had a fantastic time and we have been using this idea in our language lessons, they are eager to create their own characters and story books.
Inspired by the island-living theme in the Katie Morag series, the main focus for the project was to produce a piece of extended writing in the form of a travel brochure. The children were split into seven co-operative groups named after a Commonwealth country. They worked together and found out lots of facts and information about their country from the national dress and food to famous landmarks and people. Once they had collated all this information, they used it to write their travel brochure. They had to come up with their own company name, prices and accommodation options on their island. The children worked extremely hard on their brochures and the results were brilliant. Everyone was asked to present their brochure to our Headteacher. Every pupil was awarded a Katie Morag book of their very own for their hard work.
To round off the project we held a ceilidh and invited along their grandparents. It was a massive success and the turnout for it was overwhelming. The children had practiced Scottish songs, poems and highland dances to entertain and involve their special guests. They had fantastic feedback and the children were so pleased at who came to see and hear them. The children also shared their extended writing project with their visitors and it was lovely to hear all the amazing comments.
Alongside all of this, the children were rehearsing for their forthcoming class assembly. They performed to parents and the whole school to tell them what we had been learning. Each child was given a part to play in our assembly such as sportsman, flag bearer, Scottish dancer, Katie Morag characters and narrators. They learned songs and poems to accompany the assembly and supplied costumes to enhance the performance.
Everyone thoroughly enjoyed all of the activities and opportunities that they have been given throughout the project. They have been so enthusiastic and produced some of their best work. The project has also been included in their Enterprise Award accreditation where we are hoping to achieve our Platinum award.
Education Scotland’s website has super advice on how to support your child at home with reading. There are videos aimed at early years, primary and secondary.
For further information, please visit their website.
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