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Last week was National Digital Learning Week. In our previous post we shared the ‘Digital Story Telling’ opportunities which were being provided by Education Scotland.

Crown Primary School was over the moon when they got selected to take part in the collaborative storytelling.

In addition to this, schools in the Millburn ASG – Crown, Daviot, Raigmore and Strathdearn Primary Schools – all got together using Google classroom to create a text. Have a look to see what they created collaboratively. What a great example of collaboration.

CLICK HERE – Digital Story Telling Millburn ASG Example

The Sequence and Narrative 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.

Sequence and Narrative development underpins children’s oral language comprehension and their ability to create texts using narrative and sequence structures. Children need to have a clear understanding of the narrative and sequence concepts within texts in order to comprehend what they read and structure/ create their own texts.

CLICK HERE – Narrative Guidance	CLICK HERE – Sequence Guidance		CLICK HERE – Talk for Writing Guidance
CLICK HERE – Narrative Editables EM CLICK HERE – Narrative Editables GM (coming soon)		CLICK HERE – Sequence Editables EM CLICK HERE – Sequence Editables GM (coming soon)

To support oral language development across the primary school, and strengthen adult/child interactions, the Words Up Primary Key Messages have been produced for schools to use as part of their literacy overviews.

The key messages will be woven into the current training programmes across Highland. Posters are currently being produced; please speak to your local Speech and Language Therapist (S&LT) for more information.

CLICK HERE – Words Up Primary Key Messages

May’s ’50 Word Fiction’ from the Scottish Book Trust encourages you to get outdoors and write about some of our wonderful wildlife.

This month’s ’50 Word Fiction’ from the Scottish Book Trust asks you to ‘Write a story about an unusual plant.’

Why not tie it in with Outdoor Classroom Day this week on Thursday 17th May 2018? There are great resources on the Highland Learning for Sustainability (LfS) blog to support literacy through outdoor learning.

CLICK HERE – Highland LfS Blog

The deadline is Tuesday 29th May 2018. The two Young Writers categories are open to all children and young people from 5 to 18.

CLICK HERE – ’50 Word Fiction’

As part of their suite of resources, Education Scotland have produced a set of Literacy and English milestones to support learners with complex additional support needs.

“Milestones are important points in development and demonstrate progression. Learners who are not able to achieve any of the benchmarks within Early Level still require tracking and monitoring of their progression. Whilst, many of these learners will move on to work at Early Level, some learners will continue to make progress at the pre-early stage.

These milestones are intended to support practitioners to track the progression of these learners. They are not intended to provide an alternative curriculum for children and young people with complex additional support needs and planning for such learners should continue to be based on the Experiences and Outcomes from Curriculum for Excellence with personalisation where required.”

CLICK HERE – Education Scotland: Milestones

Author, Ross Collins, of the wonderful rhyming picture book ‘There’s a Bear on my Chair’, will be on Authors Live on Thursday 17th May 2018, 11am – 11.40am.

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

After you’ve signed up to join below, you may want to check out Ross’ read through:

CLICK HERE – SIGN UP AUTHORS LIVE: ROSS COLLINS

Date: Thursday 17th May 2018
Time: 11am – 11.40am
Target Audience: P1 – P3

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.

As part of National Digital Learning Week, Monday 14th May – Friday 18th May 2018,  Education Scotland have publicised a great opportunity to develop digital technology skills through story telling.

Education Scotland are launching 2 main activities:

• An exclusive National Digital Story telling activity for 30 schools across Scotland with famous children’s author Lari Don.
• A digital story telling activity schools can enjoy in their local  setting.

CLICK HERE – #NDLW18 MORE INFORMATION

When we support children and young people to create texts it is important that we provide them with clear purpose and audience.

Stride’s ‘Home and Away‘ writing competition provides children and young people with the opportunity to explore their thoughts about a topic they feel passionate about linked to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This is a brilliant opportunity to demonstrate literacy skills within the context of Social Studies, Health and Wellbeing and Religious and Moral Education.

CLICK HERE – Home and Away SDGs

The Care Inspectorate document ‘Our Creative Journey‘ shares how Expressive Arts can be developed within early learning and childcare settings.

Within the document, there are a number of examples which can supporting children’s Emerging Literacy development.

A few of the examples:

• pg.7 details the work of stories, songs, games and rhymes
• pgs.24 and 25 share the importance of gross motor movement
• pg.29 has a case study on storytelling
• pg.46 includes an example on painting to music
• pg.61 shares the opportunities for motor and language development through “playdough stations”.

These are some great examples of interdisciplinary learning experiences which can support children’s literacy, language and communication skills through adults and children playing and talking together.