Our first parent workshop of the year, for Primary 1 parents and carers, took place on Thursday 21st September. The focus was on Primary 1 – 3 literacy.

Mr Young opened the workshop by talking about Cathedral Primary’s holistic approach to Literacy:

• a rigorous synthetic phonics programme to give children the tools they need to read and write
• the use of decodable reading books during phonics lessons to give children instant success and build their confidence
• exposure to non-decodable reading books to develop vocabulary and comprehension
• access to ‘real’ books through regular visits to the school library
• daily opportunities for the children to apply their phonics and reading in meaningful ways across the curriculum

The remainder of the workshop was led by Mrs McCoy who gave a presentation on ‘Read Write Inc. Phonics’, followed by a live phonics lesson with a group of Primary 2 pupils. The children were absolute superstars and parents and carers were blown away by the model lesson.