Literacy Teaching

[Guest]

I am already feeling a little fed up with my literacy planning and was after some ideas for making it a little more exciting. I am enjoying teaching numeracy and seem to have plenty of ideas for this but literacy seems to take forever to plan. I would love to know if anyone uses a useful scheme.

I am not so far linking to the NLS and whilst the head has not commented on this, I was wondering if I should be.

Also, do others do so many days of reading and some of shared writing etc each week? Apologies for all the questions!

[Guest]

You reception? I am and I've previously used Literacy Matters and linked to NLS. This year however, I'm being rebellious and being my own leader! What I've decide is to forumlate learning intentions linked to the ELGs so that I know I'm covering them and I know where I'm going as far as the children's needs.

 

Then what I've done is be very creative in my links to topics. For example, this week we've done fireworks as a themeish. It was linked to Eid too - anyway, had a non-fiction Celebration that we looked through a couple of days - first very much reading the text and picking out anything interesting blah blah. Second was them recounting for me which I enhanced with props and other photos linked to Eid. Then because we had done firework pictures, I had also used the whole class input to model writing captions under their own pictures etc. It may not sound flamboyant, but we enjoyed it.

 

What I'm trying to do is focus on what I want the children to learn and yet be very at ease and child led as far as where we go. I plan the usual stuff like familiarise chidren with storybook language etc, but I also ensure that the inputs are largely purposeful and not simply formal, same old, same old. We've been on a trip to the moon using boxes linked to the story Whatever Next and I also had the children sitting in a circle and put large boxes in the centre and we brainstormed what we could use them for. It introduced the term 'imagination' what the kids love chanting at the minute and led to so great indepedent creative activities.

 

I'm sure I'm not helping much, but I'm just trying to highlight that I don't think a scheme as such is needed in reception - link to what you are doing, cover your intentions, but most of all, have fun. It's a shame that the NLS has taken so much fun out of what I remember to be a very imaginative time when I was younger - I'm trying to bring back some of that flair in my sessions now.

 

Hope that helps somewhat!

 

x

[Susan]

Matilda, Ive been thinking about this and I think that I found literacy teaching most difficult when I was planning more formally.

I also think that this is the essence of what Gater is saying. Think about what you want to teach, matching your objectives to the childrens needs and be creative! You might find it helps to look at hamiltontrust.org.uk and adapt some of their plans, they may help you to focus your ideas.

 

At this stage in the year, I would be thinking about developing the childrens speaking and listening skills, building their phonic knowledge, developing their pencil and writing skills and introducing them to books.

I would have a phonic session every day and one or the others each day.

[Guest]

It probably is that I am trying to be too formal and as a result it doesn't feel fun. I worry that I won't meet all the objectives, especially when I look at all the objectives in the hamilton plans for one weeks literacy. I can't possibly assess all that!

My chn can't really cope with writing at the moment and I feel bad for making them do this when they don't know what the letters look like and can't form them properly even if they do. I want to spend my time focussing on this but then I feel like I won't get everything else covered - araghh!