Literacy Resources

I worked with a school last week on talk for writing and we looked briefly at inventing texts.  I took the following characters along with me. In order that children start to invent texts we need to hook them into what they know already so I drew the characters out of a bag one at [...]

I am not a reader of graphic novels but decided that I needed to investigate them.  I feel deprived if I don’t learn something new in the summer holidays!  As ever, I wondered whether I could use them to help children develop meaning making skills and ‘see’ devices that can be used in writing. The [...]

We launched our boys writing project today.  It was a good morning where we explored some of the ideas that might be investigated in the classroom. We are using the lesson study model of CPD for this project.  I first read about lessons study in a wonderful book, The Teaching Gap by James Stigler and [...]

One of the mantra’s that schools are using nowadays is Pie Corbett’s imitate, innovate and invent.  As a literacy team we have spent a long time sharing with others what imitate and innovate mean in terms of writing but have not focused on the invention aspect in any detail.  However, without frequent inventing sessions we [...]

September is always such an exciting time, even more so if you start a new job.  It’s all there before you.  So what do you do with your class on the first few days?  Here are a few activities that I would like to use in the first few days with a new class but [...]