Tag: vocabulary

Coming soon to our FVWL RIC – Alex Quigley talks Literacy

We are delighted to have Alex Quigley, a renowned literacy specialist, contributor to Educational Endowment Foundation (EEF) research and publications and author of several best-selling books (including Closing the Reading Gap and Closing the Vocabulary Gap) join us for three sessions in May and June. During these sessions Alex will share insights and evidence-informed approaches that teachers can employ in their practice. There will be a follow-up session on 15th June for attendees to discuss what they have taken from the sessions, as well as a platform to discuss how the RIC can best support you going into the 2022-2023 school year.

 Closing the Reading Gap with Alex Quigley

11th of May at 4pm – Alex explores the brilliantly complex act of reading in this session. He tackles practical issues, such as developing reading fluency, and how to support pupils to become strategic and knowledgeable readers. The session draws upon Alex’s best-selling book for teachers, and is research-informed but also packed with practical strategies every teacher can apply in the classroom.

Sign up via CPD Manager – course ID: 78388

Literacy across Learning with Alex Quigley

25th of May at 4pm – During this one-hour session Alex draws upon his classroom practice and a wealth of research evidence to explore the challenges pupils face when it comes to literacy in the classroom. In this session, he explores the importance of ‘disciplinary literacy’, focusing on how pupils develop as readers and writers across the curriculum. The session includes practical strategies to develop reading, writing and vocabulary approaches that unlock the curriculum for students and help ensure their success.

Sign up via CPD Manager – course ID: 78133

*This session is also part of the Forth Valley and West Lothian Regional Improvement Collaborative’s Futureproofing Pedagogy Series, which runs every Wednesday from 4pm from 26th April until 1st June.

Closing the Vocabulary Gap with Alex Quigley

7th of June at 4pm – Alex explores the phenomenon of the ‘vocabulary gap’ and its crucial impact on learning in the classroom. In this session, he explores how teachers can support vocabulary through rich academic talk, alongside applying vocabulary approaches to ensure pupils read and write with success. Alex holds a mirror up to word-rich classrooms and offers practical strategies that you can apply in your own classroom context.

Sign up via CPD Manager – course ID: 78389

Closing the Literacy Gap

15th of June at 4pm – This session is an opportunity for practitioners who attended Alex Quigley’s sessions to meet up and discuss the key messages covered in the sessions, as well as sharing ideas on what type of support they would like from the Forth Valley and West Lothian Regional Improvement Collaborative in the 2022-23 school year.

Sign up via CPD Manager – course ID: 78697

Forth Valley, West Lothian Regional Collaborative Disciplinary Literacy Training sessions

Our FVWL RIC literacy team is offering new professional learning in Disciplinary Literacy for non-English teaching secondary practitioners. John Sherry, Principal Teacher of Literacy with FVWL RIC will deliver the following sessions:

  • Disciplinary Literacy 1 – An Introduction to Disciplinary Literacy – Monday 27th September at 4pm, Webinar. Course ID: 76134
  • Disciplinary Literacy 2 – Reading – Monday 25th October at 4pm, Webinar. Course ID: 76161
  • Disciplinary Literacy 3 – Writing – Monday 29th November at 4pm, Webinar. Focus on writing and how it is approaced in diferent ways across the curriculum.  Course ID 76162

These sessions will explore how to get secondary pupils to read like a geographer, write like a biologist or talk like a mathematician. This series is for secondary practitioners who want to know what disciplinary literacy is and how it can be used in their teaching. The three sessions will cover how pupils learn best when they are immersed in the vocabulary and nuances of their subject (session 1), with a specific focus on reading (session 2) and writing (session 3). Participants will be supported at every stage of the process as they trial and create subject-specific strategies to embed into their practice and help their pupils to reach their potential.

Sign up for each session via CPD Manager or contact John Sherry (gw14sherryjohn@glow.sch.uk) for more information.

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’.

nethermainsb

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.

nethermainsc

Literacy at Nethermains

Pupils from Nethermains Primary School have been discovering their inner poets by using autumn as their inspiration and developing their active literacy skills by creating some exciting new poetry.  They worked co-operatively to create a list of exciting vocabulary and ventured on a walk in their local wooded area as a stimulus for their writing.

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Practical Solutions for Early Intervention

This document ‘Practical Solutions for Early Intervention’ can be found in all Falkirk Council early level establishments.

It contains practical examples of learning experiences aimed at talking and listening, reading and writing.

This is a valuable document and embraces the aims of Falkirk Council’s Literacy Strategy.

The scanned document can be accessed from here: Practical Solutions for Early Intervention.

For more information, please contact the Curriculum Support Team at Camelon Education Centre.