We have been developing some training videos which you can use, either just to watch on your own, or with your class in a kind of on-line team teaching situation. As I write we have three weeks of lessons, with each week containing a video for days one to four.
There is also one training video for children in P6/7, which is a spelling investigation. It comes with a pack of activities. We will continue to add a few more to this group.
If you would like access to these, let me know, and I’ll add you to the shared drive.
Every year we put together a reading challenge to encourage children to read.
This year’s challenge is the Book Badge Collection.
There are eight book badges to be earned:
The Night Owl
The Early Bird
The Weekend Warrior
The Professor
The Bite-sized Bookworm
The Marathon
Librarian
The Seven-day Stretch
Every time that a child fulfils the requirements of a badge, they get a badge to stick onto their record sheet. Each well-earned badge can be celebrated with a certificate.
Just a reminder that everything you need for getting started with emerging literacy in P1 can be found on this site!
There are a lot of support materials here, so a good way to get orientated is the Where to Begin Guide, which also has links to short training videos
Support networks
For practitioners in Highland, there will be some support networks offered throughout the session, led by teachers along with speech and language therapists and occupational therapists
Dates will be on the CPD calendar and on Digital Schools in a few days time
The Talk for Writing trainer will be conducting training on the inset days on the 13th and 14th of September.
This training is for Highland Council staff only.
On the 13th of September, she will be working with teachers who would like to receive initial training or a refresher session in the Talk for Writing process.
On the 14th of September, she will be working with teachers who have already started using the Talk for Writing process and would like to deepen their understanding.
There will be a cost of around £35 per person, but this will depend on how many people attend. Please ask your line manager for permission before applying for this course through Highland Council’s CPD page.
It would be helpful to have all applications registered by next week.
The code and resources will be sent out prior to training to all those who have registered.
Emerging Literacy is Highland Council’s developmentally appropriate approach to literacy in P1 and beyond.
P1 teachers are supported through networks through the year to implement differentiated teaching and learning in literacy.
This hour-long course is to help teachers new to the approach, or who want to refresh their knowledge, to get started in August. It will cover the model behind the approach, and how it is put into practice in phonological awareness, phonics and pre-handwriting learning.
Are you interested in learning more about the new PM Benchmark Literacy Assessment 2? Julian Duncan a trainer for PM Benchmark will run training on the 15th and 18th of March 2021.
The training is suitable for School Managers, ASN teachers and class teachers.
It equips teachers with accurate and robust assessment tools to identify students’ instructional or independent reading levels. The resource offers a complete literacy assessment, allowing teachers to conduct reading records to effectively capture students’ progress in reading fluency, retelling abilities and comprehension within and beyond the text.
When Monday 15th March at 15:30 to 16:30
Thursday 18th March at 15:30 to 16:30
To access the training link, please sign in through CPD.
We know how busy you all are, so we are continuing to put together some resources that may help.
We now have Poetry Packs 3 and 4 ready to go! Poetry Pack 3 is based on ‘Street Talk’ by J.K Annand and Poetry Pack 4 is based on ‘The Hill We Climb’ by Amanda Gorman. Both poems have a Scottish connection…read on to find out more!
Many teachers in Highland are planning, teaching and assessing writing using the Talk for Writing framework. This is not a one size fits all approach and needs to be adapted to suit your class.
We thought we’d share this example of good practice from Tore Primary School. Sally Thorne, class teacher, shares how she teaches writing while linking with other curricular areas and contexts.
Sally used ‘The Abominables’, a class reader from Pie Corbett’s reading spine as the stimulus for this unit of work. The unit was introduced with free writing on ‘If I met a yeti he….’ along with accompanying art work. This was successful in hooking the pupils, generating interest and excitement.
Sally shared the next steps…
“After group planning sessions, which includes building up word banks, I took one of the more successful plans, with tweaks and phrases from all groups and we created a class text that we could use for reading as a class. We pulled this apart for literacy techniques which could be used in the pupil’s writing.
This was then the basis for the pupils to plan and create their own story, a section at a time. As it’s a multi-stage writing process, some pupils are able to run with the idea, some need more support. I try to create texts that contain as many of the T4W techniques as possible: repetition, power of 3, starting with adverbs etc.”
Suzanne Callander (SAC Literacy Officer) has developed a range of support materials aimed at the the teaching of Listening and Talking at both Primary and Secondary level.
Suzanne will be running 3 sessions this week to share the materials and how these might be used. Join us on Tuesday 26th, Wednesday 27th and Thursday 28th at 1.30pm to hear more.
The link for training can be found on the Highland Digital School Hub on the calendar.
