Category: Literacy

Citv Share a Story Winner! Falkirk Pupil wins National Competition

 

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 and Action Resource

 

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.

Engaging with Families

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.

Meta-Literacy at Graeme High School

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.

Teacher Champions – Maddiston Primary School

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.

What happens in Active Literacy Reading? Sharing Learning with Families

Sharon Wallace, Curriculum Support Officer, Services and School Improvement Team has developed a range of materials to share with parents and carers about what happens in their children’s classrooms.

Mums, grans, aunties, big sisters and little sisters from St. Patricks R.C.P.S. in Denny shared one of these experiences at their ‘Girls Night In’.

Sharon demonstrated how teachers use a range of texts (in this case, Michael Rosen’s ‘Chocolate Cake’ poem) to develop the six reading comprehension strategies.

Firstly, the ‘big’ girls had a competition to see how many types of chocolate bars and how many characters they could spot in the ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ film trailer. This was a close competition! Sharon then ascertained their prior knowledge and experience of ‘chocolate’ by asking some open questions and asking the girls to put the word ‘chocolate’ into a sentence.

A recital of Michael Rosen’s ‘Chocolate Cake’ poem was well received with lots of giggles and laughter. The girls then drew ‘visualisers’ demonstrating their knowledge of the main ideas in the poem. One girl was able to make excellent comparisons between Bruce Bogtrotter (Matilda) and the little boy in the poem – very impressive!

The girls then eloquently answered a range of questions relating to inference. When asked what the little boy should have for his play piece after sneaking up in the middle of the night and demolishing a whole chocolate cake, the girls replied “Nothing!” or “Well, maybe a piece of fruit!”

The session concluded with the girls all trying out a sample of chocolate cake, whilst at the same time offering some fantastic adjectives to describe the smell, taste and whole experience.

All of the girls left the workshop with big smiles on their faces (and maybe a few sticky, icky fingers!).

Feedback from this session  included:

I liked the poem about the little boy who liked the chocolate cake.

Direct quote: I like the poam wif a litel boy wot likt choclt caik.  (Primary 1)

It was very good – I loved the story of the cake – thank you (Sophie P3)

We enjoyed hearing the story of the chocolate cake – we had lots of laughs during the session.

Good idea to introduce Literacy activities this time!

Chocolate cake workshop was worthwhile – something a bit different!

We wish we had visited the chocolate cake workshop – heard lots of good things about it.

More sessions like this are coming soon to a school near you! For further information, please contact Sharon.wallace@falkirk.gov.uk

I Like Big Books!

Larbert High School has highlighted the value of reading in this parody you tube video entitled ‘I like big books’.

The video can be viewed by clicking on this link.

 It was produced as part of Literacy Week 2013.

Active Literacy is used in all Falkirk establishments and aims to develop six key reading comprehension skills which are:

  1. Prior knowledge and understanding
  2. Metalinguistics
  3. Visualisation
  4. Inference
  5. Main ideas
  6. Summarising and paraphrasing.

All six comprehension skills are explicitly modelled and taught and pupils then apply these skills across a wide range of texts across a variety of genres.

Talking and Listening – Spelling Strategies – Skills for Life.

Larbert High School has produced a new you tube video relating to Talking and Listening highlighting the importance of  literacy skills.

 The short you tube video is a parody of Ant and Dec’s ‘Let’s Get Ready to Rumble’ entitled ‘Let’s Get Ready to Mumble’.

The video can be viewed from this link.

The video was launched at Larbert High’s Literacy week 2014 where there were a variety of literacy activities on offer, including ‘Spelling Bee’ which incorporates Active Literacy spelling strategies introduced in Falkirk Council primary schools. More information about these exciting literacy activities can be found by reading the article in our local newspaper The Falkirk Herald.

The Active Literacy Spelling programme aims to provide children with a range of strategies they are able to apply to tricky words in all curricular areas.

Parent Zone – Education Scotland Website

Literacy is important in all areas of learning. Being able to read and write accurately, to listen carefully and to talk clearly about ideas will increase the opportunities for young people in all aspects of life and will allow them to participate fully in learning and later in a work environment.

Parents play a crucial role in helping children to develop literacy skills from an early age. They contribute to this by reading to their children every day, learning nursery rhymes together and using normal events in life to help children learn about the world around them, for example by pointing out signs. Parents can contribute further to their children’s learning by encouraging children to talk about their thoughts and ideas, and about how they are feeling. Parents can encourage children to explore literacy outside the classroom.

Young people will enjoy reading different types of texts and all reading helps them to develop their skills. So whether they are reading a book, a blog, a magazine or a sports report, it will help if parents are encouraging and supportive.

This website has lots of ideas and links through to other websites to help parents and carers support their children with literacy at home.