The development of literacy skills plays an important role in all learning.
Pupils develop and extend literacy skills when they have opportunities to:
- communicate, collaborate and build relationships
- reflect on and explain literacy and thinking skills, using feedback to help them improve and sensitively provide useful feedback for others
- engage with and create a wide range of texts in different media, taking advantage of the opportunities offered by digital technologies.
- develop an understanding of what is special, vibrant and valuable about their own and other cultures and their languages
- explore the richness and diversity of language, how it can affect them, and the wide range of ways in which they can be creative
- extend and enrich vocabulary through listening, talking, watching and reading.
In developing their English language skills pupils:
- engage with a wide range of texts and develop an appreciation of the richness and breadth of Scotland’s literary and linguistic heritage
- enjoy exploring and discussing word patterns and text structures.
In Kildrum we implement the North Lanarkshire Literacy Strategy. This involves all pupils being much more active in their learning using strategies such as reciprocal teaching, paired and trio work as well as individual and group work. We believe reading and writing are at the core of every child’s education and we have prioritised it in terms of the length of time pupils are engaged in literacy. Staff development has focused on the implementation of changes in methodology and teaching approaches. There is a very structured phonic and spelling programmes in place throughout the school as well as significant increase in the amount of reading and writing activities done in each class. We actively promote reading for enjoyment beginning with children reading two books per week in Primary 1 and culminating in our Primary 7 pupils setting themselves targets of reading up to eleven chapters of a novel per week.
We have had lots of visitors from other school and councils, as well as the Scottish Government, to see our children’s work and to view the good practice of the teachers. We are very proud of this.
As well as teaching Literacy within Literacy time the children also develop their Literacy skills through other areas of the curriculum. Children set their own targets for improvement and these are carried across the curriculum e.g. report writing in Science, a historic recount, talking and listening within all kinds of collaborative and group work, note taking from watching video clips etc. The children make cross-curricular links and understand the importance of the transfer and application of skills. Talking and Listening skills are being developed across the curriculum and the use of multi-media is well established.
