Primary 6 pupils from St Margaret’s PS are delighted to be sharing how they use the visualiser to help them with their writing. A visualiser is a camera that projects your work onto the  interactive white board. We put our work under the visualiser so that the class can help us improve our writing. They spot our mistakes and help us improve them.

 

 

A typical P6 writing lesson

A typical P6 writing lesson begins with Miss McKenzie giving us a topic to focus on. We then do some writing exercises to get in the right mind-set. Sometimes we continue author’s stories e.g. The Elephant Train! Caity said “I enjoy my writing and find I can express myself.” After we’ve finished our writing we put it under the visualiser or we assess someone’s work. We then point out our positives, next steps and marvellous mistakes. “Sometimes we make mistakes but we always learn from them.” said Lily-Grace.

Opinions about our writing

Theo pointed out that “At the start of each term we do an assessment to determine what level we are at.”In our writing we like to share what we’ve done during the time given. We also enjoy writing imaginative, fictional stories.  Here are some of our thoughts on our writing:

“I really enjoy writing, even though I don’t always meet my target that I set for myself” Emily F

“I’m not the best at writing, but one day I think I will enjoy it more than now.” Anna B

“I think I make great stories and I should improve my hand writing.” Jake

“I find that having a set target encourages me to think more about my writing.” Rachel D

 

How we use the visualiser

We use the visualiser when we are writing. It helps us because we get feedback on our work. We call mistakes “Marvellous Mistakes” because we all learn from them. It also makes it sound more positive. We use “Next Steps” to correct our class mates’ writing – they are things that you could improve on or change. We also use the visualiser to find “Positive Points” in our writing. We usually use it half-way through our writing so we can fix the corrections of our first half. Everyone finds the visualiser very helpful in our class – Rachel G explained “I enjoy writing and sometimes make mistakes but that is OK because I learn from them“!

We will finish our blog post with a few more opinions about writing:

“Writing helps you develop your skills, VCOP, imagination and hand writing” Violet

“I find it hard but I always get through it.” Daisy – we think this shows that we have growth mind sets and determination towards our learning!

Thank you for reading our blog post, here are some tips to improve your writing:

• neatness
• silence when you are writing
• imagination
• vocabulary
• pictures

Yvonne McBlain, curriculum support teacher and Miss McKenzie, class teacher for primary 6M were delighted to support the creation of this blog post by the pupils. First, each group of pupils in the class analysed a blog post as a text. They discussed the purpose of this type of writing, then planned their very first blog post. The pupils also organised themselves into collaborative groups with specific tasks to get the post written as efficiently as possible. Each group created their copy, then took it for typing up and publication in this blog post.

Miss McKenzie will Tweet the link to this blog post so that our writing work can be shared with parents, carers and relatives who use Twitter to follow what we do in school. We hope those who read this post enjoy finding our more about how we develop and improve our writing skills and look forward to any comments people choose to leave us below. 

On 5th February 2019 Yvonne McBlain facilitated a fascinating collegiate discussion about enjoyment and choice across literacy and English with a small group of primary teachers and principal teachers. This post is designed to share key points from this discussion.

 

 

 

 

 

We began by looking at the relevant experiences and outcomes within listening and talking, reading and writing, then considered where and how these were developed within and across the 4 contexts of the curriculum pictured above. It occurred to us that there were opportunities for wider achievement which addressed these E & Os including: Young Writers (click here to find out more), and  Mother Tongue/Other Tongue poetry competitions (click here), and the First Minister’s Reading Challenge (click here to view).

The tasks we identified from this part of the discussion  as being useful were:

1. Create holistic groups/bundles of literacy experiences and outcomes for these and other learning activities
2. Define how these are currently done in our schools
3. Consider what this learning looks like in each class/stage – how do we ensure progression in these E & Os?

The picture shows the diagram we used to capture our discussion – click on it to hear Yvonne’s audio tour.

 

 

Yvonne McBlain was delighted to be invited in to talk to Denny primary 1 pupils about their writing – Click here to read her previous blog post about the Talk for Writing programme being used by class teachers Brenda Bennie and Amanda Gardner at Denny PS.

Oliver chose his favourite page of writing and took the photograph on the left – when asked how he felt about it he said “Good, cos it’s very good and I like it.”

Felix photographed his whole storybook then said “I’m so impressed with it – people say it’s really good. Sometimes I get mistakes wrong but that’s ok because we learn. I get to take it home today. I’m gonna show my mum and dad and they’ll read it to me and they’ll say “WOW, you wroted a whole book and it’s called Baby Golden Eagle”!

 

 

 

 

Orla and Abi showed Mrs McBlain how they used their character as a pointer when they read their stories. They are in the Bluebell group and used dotted letters to help them write their stories. Orla thinks this is “really good because some of it has dotty writing and we have to trace over it and sometimes Mrs Bennie writes it (words needed for the story) on her book and it helps us”. Abi added that “some people have blank sheets to do it all themselves.” (write independently)

Both girls were also very proud of their story books – Orla said “I say 10 out of 10. I love it. I can’t wait to take it home – show it to my mum.” “I say 11! I can’t wait to show it to my friend.” exclaimed Abi.

Other pupils in the class were so proud of their writing that they asked to be photographed with their books. Well done everyone and happy reading!

 

 

 

With the support of their head teacher Debbie Calderwood and their principal teacher Emma Stanners, class teachers Holly Keenan and Karen Taylor decided to use a resource called Foundations of Writing with their primary 1 pupils at the beginning of the school year. They identified this resource as a useful intervention to help many children develop the physical strength and fine motor skills required to form letters and write well. They also felt that the methodologies promoted by this resource would work well with their adoption of a play-based approach to learning in primary 1.

“Foundations of Writing: a report of a project on the teaching of writing at the early stages” is now out of print, but may still inhabit resource cupboards. It was first published in 1986 by the Scottish Curriculum Development Service and consists of the report itself, plus a Teacher’s Guide written by Bill and Maureen Michael. Its ultimate aim is similar to the Talk to Write programme – for pupils to be able to structure and compose writing independently for many purposes across the curriculum. However, its focus on drawing/art experiences as a means to develop the technical skills of writing initially was very innovative at that time:

“The Project spends a lot of time on the teaching of handwriting skills so that children learn as soon as possible to write quickly and legibly, then to concentrate their resources on the more difficult task of composing what they want to express and communicate.” (p 11, 1986)

Holly and Karen reflected that they would value further training in the approach and in the art techniques used, but have observed considerable progress in how their pupils can demonstrate the skills listed in the initial phases of the programme. They now feel their pupils are ready to begin using Colourful Semantics.

Comparison of the drawing and writing in the photos below shows progress and impact of the approach on the children’s drawings and writing in August then November 2018.

The progression and development captured here relates to the Experiences & Outcomes of Tools for Writing – note the relevant extract from our Falkirk Literacy and English Progression Pathways at the end of this post.

 

Amanda Gardner and Brenda Bennie teach primary 1 pupils at Denny PS and are working together on their adoption of a play-based approach to teaching and learning this session. Amanda and Brenda are very well supported by their senior leaders in school, and shared their experience so far with Falkirk practitioners at a recent professional learning opportunity.

The classroom dimensions, space and layout were initially challenging, but Amanda and Brenda have gradually developed three learning spaces: their Sunflower Room, Poppy Pod and Thistle Rooms. Adopting this approach to learning has required both teachers to continually re-assess and reflect on their teaching practices and they described how the weekly involvement of an early years officer has been pivotal to their success so far.

Amanda and Brenda have broad-banded their pupils for literacy and numeracy – block 1 of each day is devoted to pupil literacy development with block 2 for numeracy. They are trialling a resource/approach called Talk for Writing, and Yvonne McBlain, (curriculum support teacher with responsibility for supporting literacy across learning) wrote this post to share information about how pupils were responding to this approach.

Talk for Writing is a commercial resource which a small number of Falkirk schools are using, and was developed and produced by Pie Corbett in collaboration with Julia Strong – click here to read more. It is a developmental approach based on research which demonstrated powerful impact on pupil attainment in writing via initial focus on talking and listening. By engaging with the sounds and patterns of spoken/heard texts (fiction or non-fiction), pupil familiarity develops, the teacher and pupils create a text map – devising and using pictures/symbols and actions to tell the story of the text until they know it and can tell/show it by heart. This multi-sensory approach to understanding and sequencing texts builds children’s cognitive pathways – gradually freeing cognitive space for them to develop their own writing skills. Through imitation of the structures and patterns of these known texts in their own writing, pupils can then innovate and move towards independent writing and extended writing. They become competent at analysing texts by reading them as readers AND as writers – evaluating and analysing the structure and content so that they can adopt and adapt valuable strategies in their own writing across the curriculum.

Amanda and Brenda are closely monitoring the positive impact of the Talk for Writing approach so far, but feel that it fits very well within their play-based, child-led pedagogy. They have built in opportunities every Friday to gather and reflect on their pupils’ feedback on their learning and to celebrate progress and achievements. The short story below is the text which is currently being explored and developed in class and is linked to a Scottish context or focus.

Susan McCudden, English teacher and Literacy principal teacher at Denny HS is working with Wendy Barr, school librarian to explore how to support pupils in developing their research and note-taking skills. Susan and Wendy collaborated to create a new course which will be delivered to S1 and S2 in session 2019-20 during 1 period each week.

This course has been designed to specifically target pupils’ ability to search more effectively for key information using a variety of non-fiction texts. It is designed to give pupils the opportunity to create useful notes which support learning tasks such as making new texts, designing informative posters, etc. The course also aims to progress pupil capacity to research independently across their learning, helping them understand how transferable these skills are and how they could be applied in different ways for various subject tasks.

Susan and Wendy have designed this new learning opportunity in response to evidence that this was a significant gap for many pupils. Participation in the new course should increase pupil confidence to undertake research and prepare them for the further challenges of senior phase and potentially higher education or training/employment. Wendy has created the poster pictured below to help pupils understand and use the Dewey System.

The images in this blog post come from Susan’s power point presentation teaching materials and highlight how the course integrates specific skills such as: searching for and selecting key information, putting information from texts into own words, summarising information, taking effective notes.

Watch this space for further details…

 

Fiona Pascal, peripatetic nursery teacher, Falkirk Children’s Services has posted simple but useful teaching ideas which develop children’s early phonological awareness – click on each below to view:

Onset and rime activities 1 – click here   and 2 click here

Rhyme production – click here              Rhyme awareness – click here

Syllable segmentation – click here         Syllable blending – click here

Word boundaries – click here

Click here to read about how phonics impacts on pupil learning. You may also want to visit the Early Years section of our Raising Attainment Glow Hub here to browse the range of materials available (Glow login required).

The image/extract from our Falkirk Literacy and English Progression Pathway below captures one example of where this learning is referenced within the experiences and outcome and benchmarks.

Education Scotland colleagues have made a number of resources available to support learning and teaching of literacy across learning in secondary settings (click here to link to National Improvement Hub source).

These resources offer practical advice for practitioners in all curricular areas on how to plan learning and teaching experiences to develop and extend young people’s literacy skills, and has sections for ‘Reading’, ‘Listening and Talking’ and ‘Writing’.

Each section of the resource includes reflective questions for practitioners or groups of practitioners to use for self-evaluation purposes and/or to inform planning.  There is an  informative introductory PowerPoint and clear references to the key CfE documentation which supports literacy across learning are made (including Building the Curriculum 1 and 3-18 Literacy and English Review). As well as highlighting the core skills required to improve literacy across all subjects, the resource outlines approaches to support teaching and learning of literacy and can be downloaded as PDF documents.

The power point image above is hyperlinked to a professional learning presentation about writing which can be used by faculty heads or practitioners as part of collegiate professional learning – simply click to open. It offers useful guidance on planning, delivering and assessing writing for different purposes from first level onwards.

Similarly, click on the resources below to access the Education Scotland support materials for writing. These national support materials complement the planning guidance available in our Falkirk Literacy and English Progression Pathways (click here to view – Glow log in required) :

Information about skills and progression of writing

See the sample image below for Explaining, analysing, evaluating

Creating rich writing tasks across the curriculum

How listening and taking help with writing

Interim writing – how to edit and review writing

A peer review pro forma which helps pupils structure and provide feedback on writing

 

 

 

Notes taken by Yvonne McBlain from update presentation on SNSA by David Leng, Scottish Government (Click to view full presentation):

Key messages regarding SNSA which are not being positively reported by the media:

• Is a diagnostic assessment – not high stakes test
• Designed to help teachers identify and enable appropriate progression, pace, challenge, etc.
• Is only 1 assessment among others which contribute to teacher judgement
• Is aligned to Curriculum for Excellence
• Represents a moment in time regarding a child’s understanding
• But, website can now offer national comparison data where this may be useful

Updates on SNSA developments:

• 570000 assessments completed last session
• 3 point scale has been replaced by a 12 point scale which provides more detail about the child’s performance – new training is available to support effective use of this scale
• National norms are now available for comparison – these are/will be gathered from data at 2 points in the year – pre-Christmas then March
• Data and feedback about the assessment process is being gathered from a sample group of practitioners/users.
• The training menu for SNSA has been expanded by 3 more courses which focus on analysing data to inform improvement, including in  ASN and EAL contexts.
• The Primary 1 User Review resulted in 30% of the questions being replaced, the provision of advice on classroom management for practitioners, gathering of case studies and set up of a practitioner forum which will be chaired by Sue Ellis and will advise the SNSA production team.
• The Parliamentary Review is on going with a report due by May 2019.
• Schools should continue to use SNSA as advised in the meantime.

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.