Prepare for lift off as we travel across the galaxy on a very special reading mission. The Summer Reading Challenge 2019 is nearly upon us and this year’s theme is Space Chase.

Inspired by the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing, the Challenge which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, encourages children to discover new authors and read books!

Starting on Saturday 22nd June 2019, The Summer Reading Challenge encourages children aged 4 to 11 to read six library books during the long summer holiday. Sign up in your local library.

What is the Summer Reading Challenge?

The Summer Reading Challenge takes place every year during the summer holidays. You can sign up at your local library, then read six library books of your choice to complete the Challenge. There are exclusive rewards to collect along the way, and it’s FREE to take part!

The Summer Reading Challenge website helps you keep track of your reading all year round: find new books to read, take part in competitions and and play games.

Today the Emerging Literacy in Early Learning and Childcare (ELC) Toolkit has been launched, designed to support ELC settings through self-facilitated professional learning in taking a developmental approach to Emerging Literacy.

The online toolkit includes a suite of professional learning online modules in:

• adult/child interaction in ELC
• concepts of print in ELC
• oral language in ELC
• phonological awareness in ELC
• pre-handwriting in ELC.

The adult/child interaction module takes between 1.5-2 hours, and the others take around 45 minutes to 1 hour to work through in a group. It is recommended that practitioners engage with the adult/child interaction module first, and then the others in an order that is most appropriate to the setting.

The online modules are designed so that settings can work through them at a pace that is appropriate to them as part of their ongoing self-evaluation and improvement planning. Each module is designed to be engaged with individually, with practitioners exploring the principles of that module in practice in the weeks following engagement with the online training.

CLICK HERE – Taking a developmental approach to Emerging Literacy in Early Learning and Childcare (ELC)

The Education Endowment Foundation have seven recommendations for supporting children’s literacy, language and communication. These dovetail with our approach to taking a developmental approach to literacy, language and communication through Emerging Literacy. Check out the graphic below.

CLICK HERE – EEF – Improving Language, Communication and Literacy

Looking ahead to next session you may wish to consider how you could support the development of children’s listening and talking skills, their sequence and narrative skills and their retell and creation of text through the Scottish International Storytelling Festival (SISF) 2019.

This is taking place between Monday 2nd September 2019 and Monday 2nd December 2019. The SISF website has links to resources, storytelling contacts and details of funding to support with the costs. The Beyond Words School Resource also has further information.

CLICK HERE – Scottish International Storytelling Festival Website

The National Literacy Trust have launched the Small Talk website to support families in chatting, playing and reading with their babies, toddlers and children to support their child’s development.

When developing familiy learning, you may find that some of the suggestions from Small Talk sit well alongside Highland’s multiagency guidance on Bumps2Bairns.

CLICK HERE – Small Talk Website

The Poetryline section of the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education (CLPE) has been updated and includes poets on film, a bank of poetry, and teaching sequences linked to selected poems. Well worth checking out when using poetry in the classroom.

CLICK HERE – Poetryline CLPE

What’s Your Story dared Scotland’s teens to get their creative juices flowing on the theme of love! Check out Issue 2 of the What’s Your Story magazine for poems, short stories and illustrations exploring love with wit, style, generosity and – of course – heart.

CLICK HERE – What’s Your Story Magazine: Issue 2

Following Friday’s post on Education Scotland’s Political Literacy and Debating resources, your school may be interested in the School Mock Court Project that has just opened application for the next session. 

There is a Juniors category for P6 and P7 children that, through using a court case, develops skills such as critical analysis, presentation, creating texts and debating.

There is a Seniors category for S3 to S6 young people that, through the court case, makes links across subject areas in the curriculum to develop skills in critical analysis and presentation.

CLICK HERE to find out more and register your interest

The updated political literacy and debating skills resources have been added to Education Scotland’s National Improvement Hub.

These resources can support children’s development of their literacy skills through analysing and evaluating information, justifying opinions and creating spoken texts as a response to information.

The specific resource on ‘Fake News’ supports the development of children and young people’s critical literacy skills, linked to the Social Studies experiences and outcomes.

CLICK HERE – Education Scotland You Decide Resources

Following our blog post last term on ‘Wordless Books – A Picture Tells a Thousand Words’, the Scottish Book Trust have reccommended a list of ten picture books for children aged 8-11.

Wordless Books are a great way of supporting children’s literacy and language development through vocabulary, oral langauge comprehension and narrative skills.

Using these practitioners can:

• develop children’s langauge in context by making comments, describing what they see

• ask developmentally appropriate questions, to support children’s verbal reasoning and abstract thinking

• develop children’s sequence and narrative skills to retell and create texts.

CLICK HERE – 10 Picture Books for Older Children