Word Activities to Develop Literacy

This morning Bruno Prime (Teacher of Languages) delivered a fantastic Swap Shop with a focus on activities which can help to improve literacy. The tables all had different activities which could be adapted for use in any subject. We spent five minutes at each table, before moving round to the next table, in order to try out the activities. Each table had an 'expert' from the languages department to help explain the tasks.

Here are all of the resources from the Swap Shop:

Scrabble

 http://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/Scrabble-6447837/requestAction/add/

Word Translation Game

http://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/Word-Translation-Game-6447838/requestAction/add/

Sentence Auction

http://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/Sentence-Auction-Activity-6447839/requestAction/add/

Synonym and Antonym Game

http://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/Synonym-and-Antonym-Activity-6447840/requestAction/add/

Please comment below if you have used any of the resources from this Swap Shop...

Literacy Based Starters

Melissa White (Humanities Teacher) presented Swap Shop this week...

We looked at how we could use engaging starter activities in our lessons, in order to promote literacy. Melissa shared some super resources and ideas.

10 Activities that you can try in your lessons right away:

1. Click on this link to find out more about the Halftone 2 App. 

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8. Click here to make your own word cloud. Alternatively this link will take you to the Wordle web site.

9. Using Twitter. Why not post the best tweet here on our school Twitter page?

10. 

•How might you adapt these activities for your subject?

•How might you adapt these activities or any literacy strategies to make them more boy friendly?

Please leave your comments below...

Using Images to Promote Literacy

This week Swap Shop was led by Carol Ashton, who is a Science teacher here at Clayton. The main focus was, ‘Using Images to Promote Literacy’. Pictures can provoke deep thinking, encourage lively discussion and inspire writing. 

Here are 5 top ideas from the Science department:

1. Linking words to images, e.g.Think of 9 Science words linked to this picture…
   
2. Create a Wordle from a key topic. Here is an example for ‘Chemical Changes’…
   
3.  Use image games as an engaging starter. Here is an example...
   
4. Challenge students to think differently…
   
   
   
   
5.  Use story boards to encourage students to write a narrative…
   

 Finally, for more ideas explore the TEEP web page, here is the link:

How do you use images in your subject to promote literacy?

Have you tried any of the activities discussed during Swap Shop?

Do you know of any exciting resources related to this topic?

Please do leave your comments below… 

Every Teacher is a Literacy Teacher

This week The South Newcastle Federation met for a training session on how to promote 'Literacy for Learning'. The session was led by Thomas Pilsel who is Second in English at Clayton and Leader of Literacy. The link to his Prezi presentation can be found here

 

'Top Tips' for marking for Literacy:

• Focus only on one aspect of literacy at a time. For example, only correct one area, such as: missing capitalisation, inaccurate use of the apostrophe or homophone confusion. This helps marking to be more focussed and positive.
• Focus on marking just the first paragraph for spelling and grammar errors. This will allow the teacher to appreciate the content of the work as a whole and allow the student to feel that their work is valued.
• When marking work set an additional SPAG (spelling and grammar)  target, as well as a content based target.
• Allow students the time to review their feedback and to work on improvements. This will allow both the student and the teacher to feel that progress is being made.
• Mr Pilsel also explained the benefits of occasional 'live marking'; whereby the teacher meets with the student on a one-to-one basis, to discuss and evaluate work and to support students in their literacy. This ensures that the feedback given is detailed and precise; it also allows the teacher to coach their students in a highly personalised way.

The final part of the training focussed on 'Tier Three Vocabulary'.

In subject groups we began to record the subject specific words, which students often struggle with (these 'tier three' words are more technical, academic words). A sound knowledge of these words will undoubtedly equip students with the tools that they need to access and demonstrate higher level learning.

The Learning and Teaching Team at Clayton worked with departments during the training, to help develop learning activities and teaching strategies, which will help students to acquire this subject specific vocabulary. 

We would appreciate our readers sharing their comments below. We would like to hear in particular:

• suggestions of words to add to 'Tier Three Vocabulary' banks for every subject
• further ideas and strategies for the learning and teaching of vocabulary
• feedback on the training session
• links to other useful literacy based webpages