Tag: Literacy

Secondary Probationers Examine Literacy Across Learning

40 Secondary Probationers attended a twilight session looking at literacy across learning. After an overview of local and national priorities, teachers engaged in a range of activities examining literacy within their own subject areas.

Competence and confidence in literacy, including competence in grammar, spelling and the spoken word, are essential for progress in all areas of the curriculum. Because of this, all teachers have responsibility for promoting language and literacy development. Every teacher in each area of the curriculum needs to find opportunities to encourage all young people to explain their thinking, debate their ideas and read and write at a level which will help them to develop their language skills further.  This course  provided participants with the opportunity to reflect on this followed by an overview of Falkirk Council’s Literacy Strategy. It  addressed work stream 3 ‘Further develop literacy across learning in the broad general education and the senior phase’.

Colleagues were provided an overview of ‘Active Literacy’  in Falkirk establishments and then engaged in professional dialogue.

After taking part in a range of active literacy activities including a spelling  ‘test’, they considered spelling strategies and words which are essential for their courses.

Here are a sample of their wordles:

HISTORY

BIOLOGY

 

HOME ECONOMICS

 

PHYSICAL EDUCATION

 

ENGLISH

 

 

 

Extremely Exciting Times!

CLD is excited to be part of a couple of ground breaking pieces of work currently taking place within Falkirk, aimed at providing literacies support for both adults and young people.

One of these is through an Early Years Consortium ‘Test of Change’.  This is where new or untried activities to increase literacies skills and opportunities are tried out and monitored to see if they work.  P4 pupils from the Denny area, as well as Adult literacies learners from across Falkirk are currently taking part in a Visual Stress Test to identify if they have visual difficulties, which wouldn’t be picked up by a regular eye test, but which may contribute to reading difficulties.  Those identified are taking part in further testing by the Caledonian University with the aim of identifying exercises or aids which could lessen the visual difficulty and so make the process of reading, or learning to read much easier.  Hopefully all the testing will be completed by Christmas.

The second new piece of work to Falkirk is the Education Scotland funded initiative ‘Closing the Gap’. This is one of 7 projects across Scotland that are involved in action research to identify ways of reducing the inequality gap in Education. In Falkirk this project is targeting P7 pupils and their families with extra support and opportunities to work with CLD & school staff on small group or family work. Within schools work will be on ‘High Five’ interventions, and within the community on activities to increase families’ confidence with, and motivation for learning.  This pilot is expected to take place until March 2015 but it is anticipated that funding will continue after this.

Both of these pieces of work will be evaluated on completion to identify if they make up a sustainable model for targeted and holistic intervention in literacy, with the objective that ‘no child is left behind.’

On top of this our core adult literacy classes (15 classes) and ESOL (English for speakers of other languages) classes (16 classes) continue to take place in local accommodation, Falkirk wide.   In these classes adults build on their skills in areas that are relevant to them, and in ways that they are comfortable with.  Qualifications are optional, although there are increasing opportunities for adults to gain their Communication and Numeracy SQA’s in other more mainstream CLD classes, for example work clubs and healthy cookery classes.

Find out about all of these opportunities and more in the what’s on where newsletter

http://www.falkirk.gov.uk/places/community-centres/docs/What%27s%20on%20Where%20newsletter.pdf?v=201409111040

Scottish Children’s Book Awards

This year's shortlisted authors.

The Scottish Children’s Book Awards are run by the Scottish Book Trust with support from Creative Scotland. It is voted for entirely by children, with over 38,000 children across Scotland voting last year. 

Falkirk Council’s Learning Resource Service is leading an initiative to add value to the Book Award for local nurseries and primary schools, which aims to promote reading for enjoyment and to motivate our children to become lifelong readers.

The schools will follow the Scottish Children’s Book Award ‘Bookbug Reader’ (3-7) and ‘Younger Readers’ (8-11) categories.

The Learning Resource Service will provide copies of the shortlisted books and organise a celebration of reading event to showcase the literacy work attended by the shortlisted authors.

Sharing ideas

This year 19 nurseries and primary schools are taking part and there is a lot of great literacy ideas and work being created.

Here are some great ideas to use with the book, Attack of the Robot Chickens by Alex McCall from Antoinette Irwin, St Joseph’s PS:

Attack of the Robot Chickens Apostrophes

Attack of the Robot Chickens Comprehension

Attack of the Robot Chickens Metalinguistics

Attack of the Robot Chickens

For more information, please contact the Learning Resource Service on 01324 501980, lrs@falkirk.gov.uk.

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.

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.