The Lancashire School Effectiveness Service
Literacy Newsletter
“Promoting excellence, creativity and enjoyment in English and literacy through partnership with schools.”
Well...that went quickly, didn’t it! I expect many of you have remarked that it doesn’t seem like five minutes since the end of the summer term! We hope that this, the Autumn issue of our newsletter, helps you ease your way back into the challenges of school life. As always, we would really appreciate any feedback or suggestions you may have. If you would like to submit a book review for our regular ‘Have you Read’ section, or have a creative way of teaching aspects of reading and writing – let us know! Unfortunately, we have to say some sad farewells to three of our team members, Clare Cherry, Jacqui Dunn and Caroline Garland. All three have spent a very productive and successful year as consultants and are now moving on to new challenges.Clare is leaving to offer her Early Years expertise in a nursery setting. We know that she loves teaching very young children and will be in her element. Jacqui has been ‘pinched’ by one of our neighbouring authorities, Sefton, and will continue her great support for schools there.Caroline joined us as an established consultant from East Sussex but is now returning to school as an Associate Deputy Headteacher.We would like to thank them for their great contributions to the team and the schools that they have supported whilst working with us. We wish them the very best and hope for regular reports about their new roles.However, we are very lucky to have recruited Janet Pay from Broughton-in-Amounderness Primary School. We know that she is an excellent classroom practitioner and will have a great deal to offer both the team and the schools that she will be supporting. And it is with great pleasure that we are welcoming Sarah Watson back to Lancashire. She has spent the last two years as Regional Adviser for the National Strategies and is now returning as the Principal Consultant of the Literacy and Maths teams. We have missed her greatly and look forward to working with her once more.Both Janet and Sarah will be joining the team after the October half-term.
Autumn 2009
Senior Adviser / Team Leader Lyn Ranson Principal Consultant Sarah Watson Literacy Consultants Sue Dean (Senior Consultant), Helen Atkinson, Julie Clack,Marie Feathers, Edwina Maskell, Janet Pay, Nicola Tomlinson, Anita Yearsley, Louise Young CLLD Consultants Vanessa Andrews, Lesley Dodd ECaR Consultants Shirley Gott, Jayne Nicholas Administrative Staff Julia Page - Admin Manager, Alison Kenyon - Deputy Admin Manager, Daniel Hayes - Admin Assistant, Angela Jamieson - Admin Assistant, Lynn Smith - Admin Assistant You can contact us by…Phone: 01257 516160 Fax: 01257 516103 E-Mail: english.literacy@lancashire.gov.uk Website: www.lancsngfl.ac.uk/nationalstrategy/literacy Post: LPDS Centre, Southport Road, Chorley, PR7 1NG
We are unfortunately unable to provide additional copies of this newsletter but you can download the file from our website and, if you don’t have a colour printer, commercial printers will be able to print any or all of the pages for you.
Contents
Where did we go wrong? KS2 writing results 2009
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ECaR, ECaW, ECaT and ECC
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SEN updates
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Support for spelling
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CLLD - APP and EYFSP in Key Stage 1
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Identifying children for ELS support using FSP data
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Have you read?
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Every Child a Reader (ECaR)
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Love reading
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Boys’ writing projects
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Journalistic writing - Apollo 13
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More able pupils’ writing project
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Foundation stage CLL planning guidance
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Write your own graphic text
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Writing at sentence level for EAL learners
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Autumn term twilight info - “Creative Comprehension”
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Learning excellence consultancy and courses
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One to one tuition flyer
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Cover photo: Matti Mattila @ flickr.com
The Lancashire School Effectiveness Service
Literacy Newsletter
“Promoting excellence, creativity and enjoyment in English and literacy through partnership with schools.”
Well...that went quickly, didn’t it! I expect many of you have remarked that it doesn’t seem like five minutes since the end of the summer term! We hope that this, the Autumn issue of our newsletter, helps you ease your way back into the challenges of school life. As always, we would really appreciate any feedback or suggestions you may have. If you would like to submit a book review for our regular ‘Have you Read’ section, or have a creative way of teaching aspects of reading and writing – let us know! Unfortunately, we have to say some sad farewells to three of our team members, Clare Cherry, Jacqui Dunn and Caroline Garland. All three have spent a very productive and successful year as consultants and are now moving on to new challenges.Clare is leaving to offer her Early Years expertise in a nursery setting. We know that she loves teaching very young children and will be in her element. Jacqui has been ‘pinched’ by one of our neighbouring authorities, Sefton, and will continue her great support for schools there.Caroline joined us as an established consultant from East Sussex but is now returning to school as an Associate Deputy Headteacher.We would like to thank them for their great contributions to the team and the schools that they have supported whilst working with us. We wish them the very best and hope for regular reports about their new roles.However, we are very lucky to have recruited Janet Pay from Broughton-in-Amounderness Primary School. We know that she is an excellent classroom practitioner and will have a great deal to offer both the team and the schools that she will be supporting. And it is with great pleasure that we are welcoming Sarah Watson back to Lancashire. She has spent the last two years as Regional Adviser for the National Strategies and is now returning as the Principal Consultant of the Literacy and Maths teams. We have missed her greatly and look forward to working with her once more.Both Janet and Sarah will be joining the team after the October half-term.
Autumn 2009
A higher than average number of schools in Lancashire,and also across the country, have reported disappointing writing results at Key Stage Two this summer. Once clerical errors and ‘dodgy marking’ have been eliminated as causes, schools are often left feeling where did we go wrong? Having supported many schools in scrutinising their scripts at the end of the summer term,the Lancashire Literacy Consultants made a number of observations. A large number of scripts demonstrated a heavy reliance on rather technical and formulaic approaches to writing which are promoted by some high profile commercially produced schemes. If writing results at your school were lower than expected, it may be useful to analyse your scripts asking the following questions.Have pupils paid sufficient attention to the content
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or ‘text message’? Pupils’ first consideration must be ‘what am I trying to say about… (these trainers/this busy place)?’ Have pupils thought about the audience and purpose
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for the writing as stated in the task? In many scripts seen, pupils had become distracted by trying to impress markers with their attempted use of highly sophisticated sentence structures, connectives and vocabulary. This seems to be particularly evident in writing from more able girls.Have pupils used complex sentences appropriately?
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Whilst variety in sentence construction is desirable,overuse of complex sentences with a range of openers will negatively affect the general flow of the writing. Writing becomes disjointed and, as ideas within paragraphs remain underdeveloped, this has a negative affect on the text structure and organisation mark. Are sentence openers matched to text type, purpose
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and audience? Contrived or inappropriate openers should be avoided. In one example taken from the longer task - a non chronological report - one pupil had written Bouncing high, I bounced up into the clouds. In this example and several similar ones seen,there is a definite sense of the pupil’s aim being to include a sentence with an ‘ing’ opener rather than to communicate meaning appropriately.Has vocabulary been selected according to text
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type, purpose and audience? The use of ambitious vocabulary should be encouraged but always with understanding of meaning.Was punctuation selected to match text type, purpose
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and audience? In many instances, there was an apparent preoccupation with demonstrating the ability to use a range of punctuation and this was ultimately detrimental to the composition and effect of the piece.Ways to develop writing: Children need to hear written language read aloud.
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Are all pupils read to in school every day? Promote the daily read aloud programme across the school – novels, short stories, poems, newspaper reports, persuasive letters, plays, diaries, information texts…See the Talk for Writing materials for ways to
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develop effective approaches to the teaching of writing (Ref:00761-2008DVD-EN) Use the Text Types Guidance from Support for
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Writing when planning to inform the appropriate use of vocabulary, sentence types and connectives.This is a web based resource which forms part of the Primary Framework for Literacy.See Steps in Learning –including the classroom
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examples -also from the Support for Writing materials. These support the teaching of specific writing skills and, more importantly, the application of these in context.Promote explicit discussion of purpose and audience
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when reading and writing texts and return to it when evaluating writing.Ensure the explicit teaching of writing through
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regular and frequent shared writing, including teacher demonstration. This continues to be one of the most powerful ways of teaching writing.Finally…First and foremost, writing is about communicating
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ideas. Developing writing skills is essential if young writers are to do this effectively.Successful,creative and enthusiastic young writers have been taught not only the skills but also how to use them to create desired effects.
Where did we go wrong? KS2 Writing Results 2009
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