Last Thursday afternoon, the ELC and Primary hosted an ELC information session followed by a Literacy event for parents and pupils.
ELC Information Session
Lynsey shared information on the routines of the nursery, how children’s needs are met through play, the role of the adults in observing and assessing the children as well as information on our recent Care Inspectorate visit.
Living in a small community, staff are aware of misconceptions people hold in relation to nursery. Lynsey took this opportunity to discuss some of these misconceptions, explaining the value of a play environment in ensuring pupils needs are met in a stimulating, motivating environment whilst covering the early level of a Curriculum for Excellence.
Parents had the opportunity to look through the floorbook and discuss the extensive learning opportunities recorded as well as look through their child’s learning story. Both these are accessible to parents at all times in the nursery for parents/carers to look through and staff are always on-hand to discuss the learning further.
Literacy Event
During inservice Pauline, Lynsey, Jayne and Elizabeth Nisbet met with some parents to organise the Literacy event. This was useful as it gave us an idea of what information and resources parents would like to find out more about.
Early Literacy
When pupils enter nursery, they begin the early level of a Curriculum for Excellence with the aim to achieve it by the end of Primary 1. In nursery, a key focus is to develop the pupil’s gross and fine motor skills to support them with the scissor skills, pencil grip and, ultimately, writing. A selection of activities to develop fine motor skills were on display and handouts for parents to take away.
Phonics and Spelling
When we met with parents, one thing asked was ‘how do I pronounce phonics correctly?’ Using the correct pronunciation is important as children are learning the phonetic sound in school rather than the letter name. Children are using their phonetic knowledge to spell so it is important to keep the consistency between home and school. For additional information about Phonics and Spelling at home, including how to pronounce phonics correctly, please see the Phonics and Spelling Help Sheet
Class teachers were on hand to show the progression of literacy resources and activities throughout primary. For pupils progressing through early level, resources were set out to show how phonics can be taught actively including writing in sand, using blend wheels and support for letter formation. At the middle and upper stages, games and activities to support spelling and reading, including a keyboard poppit, Boggle, Bananagrams as well as active spelling cards. Task mats are used in the upper stages as a reading activity and it was a good opportunity for parents to see an example of a task mat from P6/7.
Reading
We have purchased new decodable books, which we are looking forward to using with our pupils across the school. These books allow pupils to use their phonetic knowledge to read, therefore reinforcing the links between phonics, spelling and reading. There were also examples of text to allow parents to compare decodable and non-decodable passages of text.
Mrs Jayne Irvine made up question cards to use whilst reading with children at home and at school. A number of parents requested a set of the question cards at the event, if anyone else would like a set, please contact the school office.
We also had an information about encouraging children to read and a selection of comics and books of mixed interest.
To involve pupils in developing reading in school, Pauline carried out a reading audit with classes before the summer and the results were on display. Some of the pupil’s suggestions we have taken on board so far is introducing more comics with a Beano subscription and having more dialect books for pupils.
Staff are often asked about Accelerated Reader, we printed off the information from the school blog and had a sample of books across the levels for parents to look at. We hope that it gave parents information about Accelerated Reader and answered their questions, for anyone who missed the event, the display boards will be up for a few weeks if anyone would like to look the next time they are in school or you can read the blog here.
Scottish Book Bags
Every year pupils from P1-3 receive book bags from the Scottish Book Trust, each bag contains books and activities to support literacy skills at home. Pupils were able to collect their bag from the event and the rest of the book bags will go home this week.
We would like to thank the staff and the parents who attended ELC information session and Literacy event and to Gina for the delicious custard creams. We would especially like to thank Jayne and Elizabeth Nisbet and the parents who met with staff prior to the event to provide us with an insight on what would be useful to support parents.
