On Monday the P1 – P3 campaign Read, Write, Count launched its website. The website contains videos, tips and ideas for parents/carers to support their child in their literacy and numeracy learning.

Watch the video below – this is one you may wish to share with your staff and your parents/carers via school website or blog:

CLICK HERE – Read, Write, Count

Check out the ‘Why?’ section for more information. The ‘Read’ and ‘Write’ sections include ideas to support literacy development in the home environment. There are a number of videos and ideas that can be shared with parents/carers through information sessions and home/school communication.

A new resource has been created and added to ‘The Literacy Toolkit’ section of our blog.

Building Vocabulary for Better Literacy – The objective of this PPT is to explore the research and strategies around pre-teaching vocabulary and relating this to improving literacy levels and learning outcomes for children and young people.

CLICK HERE – Building Vocabulary for Better Literacy

It was great to meet the new Highland Primary and Secondary Probationers today at the Highland Council Headquarters. Please find the information which was shared re CPD events below:

CLICK HERE for information on following the Highland Literacy Blog.

Following the Emerging Literacy training which took place across the Authority towards the end of last session, the draft support materials are now available to download by clicking the images below.

Support materials, in the form of developmental continua, have been created on the following areas (click the links to download):

Concepts of Print – CLICK HERE Developmental Continuum
Expressive Language – CLICK HERE Developmental Continuum
Understanding of Language – CLICK HERE Developmental Continuum
Pre-Handwriting – CLICK HERE Developmental Continuum
Phonological Awareness – CLICK HERE Developmental Continuum

A working group will continue to develop these materials over the 2015/2016 session. Please access the most up to date version of the materials by visiting the blog.

To support your engagement with the Primary One Literacy Assessment and Action Resource (POLAAR) we have created a support tool which allows you to use the materials above when engaging with the POLAAR: Child Observation and Child Observation with Actions documents.

The following document has connected the twenty aspects in the POLAAR observational checklist to the relevant areas within the continua:

CLICK HERE – POLAAR Child Observational Assessment and Development Links

The developmental overviews which are used in Early Years and Childcare settings in Highland can also be downloaded below:

Overview of Early (3 year old) Pre-school Skills – CLICK HERE
Overview of Pre-school (4 year old) Skills – CLICK HERE

At the recent ‘Building the Primary Curriculum’ workshops, the ‘Skills for learning, life and work’ guidelines were shared with Head Teachers.

Click the image above to access the document. Within the document you will find information on Higher Order Thinking Skills and Literacy skills for life.

Check out the Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) tab at the top.

The World Book Day website has a great resource, Storytime Online, which includes a number of popular stories read by some of TV’s famous faces. Click the image below to access the resource.

Finding and Using Information is one of the Sub-SALs highlighted in Education Scotland’s Literacy and English Assessing Progress and Achievement paper.

Are we teaching learners how to find and use information on the internet? When search engines like Google conduct over 40,000 searches per second, how do our children and young people interrogate, reflect on, make inferences and draw conclusions about what they’ve found?

CLICK HERE for the Information and Critical Literacy section on Education Scotland’s website. It includes mini bites of information for pupils, parents and practitioners on finding and using information.

Evaluating Websites – Oxford Brookes University – a guide which asks you to question the sources you find online.

CLICK HERE for a blog post from Falkirk Council on Googling in the Primary classroom which links to further resources.

Want your learners to create multi-modal texts and develop their digital literacy skills?

Canva is a fabulous free (for many templates, colours and fonts) resource which can be used to create texts such as posters, collages and presentations online.

Click the image above to visit the website, sign-up for account and let your learners get creative!

Following the SSLN Literacy Report, Education Scotland has created professional workshop materials to support practitioners with areas for development identified in the results of the Scottish Survey of Literacy and Numeracy (Literacy).

Check out the following resource areas:

• Listening and Talking (Group Discussion)
• Reading
• Writing

You will find General Resources for each of the three modes, and levelled resources for First, Second and Third Levels underneath each Literacy mode.

A favourite of the Literacy Working Group . . . 

Language of Discussion Stems – these can be used by practitioners or learners as discussion starters. Perfect for use in group discussion alongside Bloom’s Question Fans.

A new resource has been created and added to ‘The Literacy Toolkit’ section of our blog.

Talk with Confidence – The objective of this PPT is to explore the research and views around developing ‘individual’ and ‘group’ confidence when talking, and to generate professional dialogue and action relating to this with a view to improving experiences for the young people in school. 

CLICK HERE – Talk with Confidence