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

At the end of April we were delighted to welcome Dr Laura Shapiro from Aston University to Highland. Laura’s original research on phonological awareness from 2008 with Dr Jonathan Solity contributed to the early developments of Emerging Literacy, the principles being embedded in c. 345 schools across the Northern Alliance.

During her visit, Laura presented her research on phonological awareness, reading and vocabulary to a group of speech and langauge therapists and educational psychologists. The presentation explores these key questions:

The presentation with audio is accessible below.

CLICK HERE – Laura Shapiro Presentation 24th April 2019

At the current round of Emerging Literacy Networks we are sharing the guidance on Information Carrying Words from the Oral Language Toolkit.

The Information Carrying Words guidance sits as part of the Oral Language Toolkit. This will be added to periodically throughout the 2018/2019 session, and updates share through blog posts.

Information carrying words are the words in a sentence that we need to comprehend when following directions or instructions. This is different to the number of words in a sentence, as depending on the context and any contextual clues, some of the words and phrases are not required in order to comprehend. The guidance encourages practitioners to reflect on their interactions to minimise overload.

CLICK HERE – Information Carrying Words

Shared by Jenny Wilson, Literacy Development Officer

For young people in secondary schools with persistent literacy difficulties, the Post-16 Phonics Approaches – A Toolkit resource from the Education and Training Foundation has been designed to support the use of phonics with young people and adults to provide access to texts and support with the creation of texts. It provides a balance between research and practical application.

CLICK HERE – Post-16 Phonics Approaches – A Toolkit

A special Authors Live from Scottish Book Trust for World Oceans Day (Saturday 8th June 2019) will be taking place on Thursday 6th June 2019.

Authors Live sessions can be watched live, or can be accessed in the Watch on Demand section of the Scottish Book Trust website.

CLICK HERE – Authors Live Lauren St John and Elizabeth Laird

Date: Thursday 6th June 2019
Time: 11am – 11.40am
Target Audience: P4-P7

Please note that the link to watch is emailed to you manually by one of the Scottish Book Trust team. As this is not an automatic process, please sign up to watch as soon as you can so that they can get your link to you in plenty of time.

The final Northern Alliance (Highland): Emerging Literacy network of this session is on Wednesday 5^th June 2019, 4pm – 6pm. This is one of the smaller group Buddy Networks with the video instead of a facilitator to support collaboration with practitioners across settings. The Buddy Network Video guides you through the session. 

To support collaboration at the network, practitioners are asked to bring electronically or in paper form:

• copies of each of the network resources – you will need these for the various activities (materials in zip file)

• trackers for phonological awareness and pre-handwriting.

The details of where each school group has identified that they will meet can be found in the relevant document below:
Highland – Buddy Network June