Tayfield Rd

Literacy

Literacy is the medium through which children interpret and come to understand the world around them. Literacy facilitates understanding in all areas of the curriculum. The teaching of literacy at The Willows takes place daily for one and a quarter hours based around the following:

reading, speaking and listening and writing. The Heineman Literacy World is the core scheme used to assist delivery of the National Curriculum.

We encourage a close partnership between home and school, especially in the teaching of reading. Throughout the school, communications between parents and teachers regarding development of children's reading skills, is achieved through the Home/School Reading Record. We encourage children to read at home and hope that parents will share books with them by reading aloud and talking about stories which are shared and enjoyed together. Our core reading scheme is the Oxford Tips for Reading Tree.

Reading

Children at The Willows make good use of the local library. During book week, the children visited the library and enjoyed story sessions. The children came into school dressed as their favourite book character and enjoyed a host of activities focused around literacy.

Literacy provides a gateway to learning and helps you make sense of all of the other subjects!

Take a trip to The Willows library where you will find story books, factual books, play scripts and big books

Download a copy of our

'Help your Child to Read' brochure

Tips for kids

Ask if you are not sure what to do. Does your teacher know you are stuck?

Have you shown that you understand by thumbs up and thumbs down?

Don't go to sleep - say you don't know what to do!

Have you used the 'Traffic Light System'?

●= hard ●= a bit hard a bit easy ●= Easy

Know what your targets are. These will help you to improve.

Speaking and Listening

Teachers will provide children with the opportunity to develop speaking and listening skills by describing experiences, expressing opinions, articulating personal feelings and making appropriate responses to instruction and questions. Children will practice these skills in a variety of contexts, including directly with the teacher, working in pairs and groups of different sizes, solving problems, planning activities and preparing presentations/assemblies. They will also be able to explore ideas through structured play and drama.

Drama

Drama is fun, especially when it is linked to History and Geography. It helps us to understand other people and what they do.

Try having discussions with a group of people. Someone can be the chairperson. Another person can be the scribe (note taker) or a reporter who tells the class what your group talked about.

In Drama, you can take the part of anything you wish. Just use your imagination.

Enjoy Speaking and Listening at The Willows

Use a partner to discuss questions that your teacher has asked you about. If you are a bit shy, talking with a friend will give you lots of confidence with classroom talk.

	Think
	Pair
	Share

Listen to questions.

Join in discussions

Try to speak loudly enough for everyone to hear.

Listen carefully.

Look at the person who is speaking.

Ask questions.

What? Who? When? Where? How?

Writing

We aim to develop in children a range of writing skills, providing them with the opportunities to write in a variety of forms for different purposes and audiences. The children will write about different topics, issues, ideas and incidents. They will learn to record their experiences and this will include having to plan, draft, redraft and edit their written work. The will be introduced to different styles of writing and encouraged to become confident, enthusiastic writers. Teachers will pay particular attention to the development of handwriting skills, also knowledge and understanding of spelling.

'MONSTER WEEK' was a fantastic opportunity for the children to develop literacy skills. Lots of different activities took place including Design Technology, Cooking, Story Writing, Music and lots more. The children were able to use their imagination to create 'Monsters'. They gave their monsters names, homes, eating habits, families and told stories about them. During cookery lessons, they created recipes that monsters would like. They wrote out instructions and preparation methods creating recipe books. In story writing they used titles, Year 4

subtitles, paragraphs and adjectives to describe their monsters. In Design Technology they talked about space and shape and different methods of joining things together. They used a wide range of vocabulary and had great fun whilst learning. The week ended with an assembly where the children showcased all of their hard work.