Category: Literacy

RED Book Award

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The RED Book Award is run by the Learning Resource Service 

The shortlist for this year’s RED Book Award was:

Beneath by Gill Arbuthnot

Salvage by Keren David

Mind Blind by Lari Don

Inflicted by Ria Frances

All great books which had that important wow factor.

The RED award ceremony took place on 29/1/16 at the Falkirk Town Hall. 250 young people attended from every secondary school in Falkirk Council. Each school provides a creative interpretation of one of the shortlisted books. The authors enjoy watching their readers deliver their opinion of the books through powerpoint and drama. There was an opportunity for the young people to meet and talk to the authors at the signing table and during the question & answer session. During the ceremony groups of pupils acted as journalists, photographers and a media group interviewed authors and participants for their school radio broadcast and filmed the event. Everyone is encouraged to wear a red accessory which contributes to the fun and energy of the day. It was a wonderful event – a celebration of books and reading culminating in the opening of the red envelope to reveal he winner of the RED Book Award. The winner is Mind Blind by Lari Don.

This year we celebrated the 10th anniversary of the RED Book Award and to acknowledge this milestone, 10 schools across the world were invited to participate in the Book Award. Copies of the shortlisted books were sent to them and some Falkirk Council pupils were able to skype the young people in other countries to discuss the books. The countries taking part were Australia, China (2 schools), Jamaica, Kenya, Malawi, Malaysia, South Africa, Switzerland and Turkey.

A quilt, featuring all previous RED winners and material from the countries who took part, was made by Anne Ngabia, school librarian at Grangemouth High School, and will act as a fabulous legacy for the RED Book Award.

 

 

 

Book Week Scotland 2015

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Book Week Scotland runs from 23rd – 29th November. This is a wonderful opportunity to celebrate books and reading. Visit Scottish Book Trust’s website to find out what is happening during this week, to find out how you can contribute and to get ideas to make reading irresistible for your children. The Learning Resource Service will be leading events throughout the week in a variety of places including nurseries, schools and Polmont Young Offenders Institute. Let the Learning Resource Service, lrs@falkirk.gov.uk know what you are doing to celebrate Book Week Scotland.

Enjoy!

School Librarians support literacy

Education Scotland gave a presentation at the CILIPS Autumn Gathering (an annual conference for librarians and information professionals across Scotland). They discussed the key messages from the Education Scotland 3-18 Literacy Review and Literacy Across Learning. School librarians considered the following reflective questions:
– How are you using a wide variety of texts to promote reading?
– What activities are you involved with to help promote a reading culture?
The responses from the school libraries can be found here.

Happy National Poetry Day – 8th October 2015!

 

Did you say it’s made of waves? Light by Margaret Tait

The theme for National Poetry Day 2015 is ‘Light’. There are resources for schools on the Scottish Poetry Library website. They have produced poem cards, posters and learning resources to support use of the poems in schools. There is also biographical information about the poets.

Children and young people love poems and poetry helps to improve literacy. Don’t forget to have a look at the excellent Scotshoose website which includes poems in Scots.

 The Scottish Poetry Library are keen to hear how schools across Scotland celebrate National Poetry Day and use the resources. They’re also very happy to feature schools’ plans and photos on their website to help promote schools’ projects. If you have something to share, please email Learning Manager Georgi Gill (georgi.gill@spl.org.uk).

 The Learning Resource Service has a broad range of resources to support poetry in your classroom.

Read, Write, Count Coming Soon

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Improving literacy and numeracy has an important role to play in improving attainment.

Improving school attainment for all and closing the attainment gap have long been priorities for the Scottish Government, with programmes such as Raising Attainment for All already working well across Scotland since launching in June this year.

In the year ahead, the Scottish Government will go further by bringing a sharper focus to the need for improvement in educational attainment.

This will include the introduction of a Read, Write, Count literacy and numeracy campaign aimed at Primary 1 to 3 children, to build on the success of the Play, Talk, Read campaign already in place.

 

 

For further information, please visit:

http://www.gov.scot/About/Performance/programme-for-government/Programme-for-Government-2014-15/Education-Attainment

Reading Strategies in Action at Nethermains (P4)

nethermainsdCaroline Cane, Probationer teacher at Nethermains is really excited to share this story from her P4 class:

We were developing our understanding of a short text we watched online using our reading strategies.

First, we recorded everything we knew about treasure and put the word treasure into an extended sentence.

nethermainsaHere is an example from one of our pupils:

‘Pirate Pete was on a mission to find the hidden treasure when he arrived on a small island because he found an old treasure map in his ship’.

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We then worked as visualisers and drew what we thought the story was going to be about based on the still image that Mrs Cane showed us.

Next we discussed who the character was and why they were looking for treasure. We created our own questions for our shoulder partner to answer.

One of our pupils independently wrote a fantastic summary of the text and used some interesting vocabulary.

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Active Literacy at Ladeside Primary School

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Here’s what’s going on at Ladeside:

Our Literacy RACI group has been focusing on reading for enjoyment. We have several classes involved in Paired Reading. Older pupils have been trained to buddy younger pupils. P7 been reading with LHS pupils at LHS Library. Calum Smith has been facilitating this. Yvonne Manning trained P6 pupils as storytellers. We have had a huge amount of input from the storytellers from Larbert community library and Falkirk Council’s Learning Resource Centre. We participated in the Scottish Children’s Book Awards by reading the novels and voting.

What do the pupils say about paired reading at Ladeside?

P.6 Big Buddy talking about EAL P.3 pupil:  “I feel that my Little Buddy’s expression and volume has improved since I started reading with him.”

P.6 Big Buddy: “I think that Paired Reading is important for the future because the younger pupils get help to understand reading better and then they will get a good job when they grow up.”

P.6 Big Buddy: “ Paired Reading helps with everyone’s confidence. At the beginning, my Little Buddy didn’t want to read and now she always wants to read by herself.”

P.6 Big Buddy: “The Paired Reading training will help me in the future not just when I read with someone but will help me to be a good learner and mini-teacher too.”

P.3 teacher: “Paired reading has been a great success with my Primary 3 class. The Primary 6 pupils were well organised, confident and excellent role models at reading. The Primary 3 pupils involved really looked forward to the days their Primary 6 buddies were coming. They read a variety of appropriate texts and were able to discuss them with their buddy and answer relevant questions.”

Parent of Big Buddy: “He’s having a really great year. We’ve heard all about the Reading Buddies. He was so happy to have been chosen.”