The revised professional learning paper and progression framework for assessing progress and achievement in Literacy and English are now live on the Education Scotland website and can be accessed here.
Tag: achievement
Closing the Gap
Falkirk Council: Closing the Gap
A number of Falkirk Council schools are in the first phase of a Partnership Project that is funded by Education Scotland’s School Improvement Partnership Programmes (SIPP).
The SIPP is a collaborative school improvement strategy that promotes new ways of working across classroom, school and local authorities. Data and collaborative enquiry are used to innovate, test and refine new approaches to tackle the attainment gap.
Falkirk Council is currently one of 7 local authorities funded to work with the Robert Owen Centre, University of Glasgow. Projects across authorities are wide ranging and are very different but the main focus of each is to use collaboration and enquiry to tackle educational inequity and ‘Close the Gap’ for pupils.
Falkirk Council’s identified task is to pilot a staged intervention approach to low attainment in literacy in the upper primary, involving the building of family capacity in areas of relative deprivation.
This is an exciting joint initiative between Schools and Community Learning and Development. Seven primary schools within Falkirk and Grangemouth clusters have signed up for the project. These schools are using a systematic literacy intervention programme called High Five (Family Fischer trust) with small groups of pupils in P7 who have attained lower literacy scores. Alongside this, the Community Learning and Development team are providing additional opportunities for the pupils and their families to encourage motivation and ambition. Opportunities for enhanced transition to High School are also being explored.
The literacy intervention programme will run for a minimum of 20 weeks. Some parents have engaged with the process and have signed up for additional CLD activities.
Robust quantitative and qualitative data is being gathered and will be presented to SIPP, and pupil progress will be tracked from P7-S2.
So far, pupils are enjoying their experiences using age appropriate strategies and structured reading materials.
Active Literacy Update Session 2013 – 2014
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
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.
Blogging About Active Literacy
Mary Jalland, Class Teacher at Westquarter Primary School, Falkirk, has created two Active Literacy blogs. Mary’s blogs are a great way of sharing effective teaching and learning in literacy, as well as sharing resources relating to the P1 and P2 Active Literacy programme. Mary has included links through to pupils demonstrating the Active Literacy strategies and methodologies, as well as a great explanation of Active Learning in their class.
Please visit: http://mrsjallandphonics.primaryblogger.co.uk/atspin/
