Literacy Edition

Love Literacy Week 2013Teaching and Learning Newsletter

Staff Literacy Tips of the Day

Quotes to ponder:

“There is no such thing as a child who hates to read; there are only children who have not found the right book.” Frank Serafini

“Literacy is, finally, the road to human progress and the means through which every man, woman and child can realize his or her full potential.” Kofi Annan

Monday: Ask students to highlight the key words or comparison phrases in their own or another’s work.

Tuesday: Use Bingo as a game to help students remember keyword definitions.

Wednesday: Dictionary Race with key terms!

Thursday: ‘SPaG bol’ Once students have finished writing, ask them to read their work aloud and make sure their ‘SPaG bol’ has all the correct ‘ingredients’- Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar.

Friday: Using key word displays effectively in lessons.

Examples:Have key words around the front of theroom for easy reference and in student Vision.Get students to create A4 posters of a key word/concept (theorist/study at KS5) with a definition and illustrative pictures as a piece of homework - set a competition for the best one!

Marking for Literacy Teaching & Revising Keywords

Reading for Information Grammar Genius

Literacy Learning LunchFriday 28th June, 1.05pm, M10

Love Literacy Week

There will be snacks, treats and refreshments!

Everybody’s ideas will be gathered together and a pocketsize handout will be created for all staff.

It will be a 40 minute interactive session of sharing and trying out some great ideas!

Literacy across the CurriculmQuestioning Strategies• Use questions to frame lessons and/or activities.• Ask questions that suggest you are not expecting the same answer from every pupil. Do this by including one of the following words in a question: might, may, could, would.• Ask students to discuss a question with a partner/group before tackling it as a whole class.• Encourage students to ask each other questions during whole class discussions. You could appoint several

‘Question Spotters’ each lesson/week!• Appoint ‘Reason Police’ each lesson/week. Their job is to ensure that other students in the class are

explaining the reasons behind their ideas by asking them questions!

Ways to Structure Talk• Create listening triads! Put pupils into groups of three, you will need a talker, a questioner and a recorder.• Pause group work to allow a ‘magpie’ from each group to ‘steal’ ideas from another group.• Snowball: ask students to discuss an idea/question in pairs, then in fours, then finally in eights before a

whole class debate commences!• Create a speaking frame for the students to use.• Ask students to reflect on talk in the lesson (meta-talk). For example: What questions did your group ask to

solve the mystery? What did you contribute to the discussion?

Writing strategies• Give students a choice of writing tasks to complete.• Develop writing through your feedback, drafts and

peer conferencing.• Pupils construct writing together.• Encourage students to link ideas with the use of

connectives.• Make the purpose, audience, style and structure of

the text you want the students to write clear. Model it.

• Show pupils good and bad examples of written work.

Reading Strategies• Ask pupils to underline any words they don’t understand and discuss these as a group.• Present longer texts to pupils in a series of small sections.• Highlight the most important parts of a text.• Encourage pupils to summarise rather than copy texts. Model this.• Sequence a disjointed text.• Draw an illustration/graph to show what a text means at a certain point.• Perform part of a text.• Give students time to discuss and clarify what has been read.• Consider the following questions: What? Who? Why? How?• Ask students to read texts together in small groups and ask each other any questions they

have before you discuss the text as a whole class.• Create writing frames and vocabulary boxes for students. They could also create their

own!

Recommended ‘Literacy’ Reads The Literacy Toolkit Gwynne’s Grammar

Literacy Across The Curriculum

‘Literacy in Action’ Displays

English, Modern Foreign Languages, Maths and Religious Studies