Literacy

Below are the planning documents used to prepare lessons for children across the Literacy and English curriculum.

Reading

Reflective Reading

At Abbotswell, we use the approach of Reflective Reading in full from P4-7 and we use strands and elements of this approach from P1-P3.

The Reflective Reading approach ensures independence when reading and offers opportunities for children to be creative when answering response questions linked to the texts. The quality of reading and analysis in P4-7 is of such high quality that we do not require reading books to go home unless there is a specific need. Obviously in the early stages of reading, the more reinforcement a child can have, the better so children will take their class books home to read with family and are expected to bring them into school each day to progress. These children will still respond to their text in an age appropriate way using the Reflective Reading strategies. 

The Reflective Reading strategies are 

Writing

Big Writing

Big Writing is the approach we use at Abbotswell to structure our writing lessons. All classes follow the same conditions and criteria during a taught writing lesson. Children complete a termly assessment known as a Cold Assessment to create targets for themselves and to enable them to see clear progress or areas to improve. Having clear targets and being able to identify gaps in the child's learning is key to their progress and development. These cold assessments are used to moderate writing across the school.

Big Writing has a focus on VCOP = Vocabulary, Connectives, Openers and Punctuation. There are fun activities and strategies teachers and staff can utilise to ensure children are engaged in their writing lessons.

The weekly writing lesson known as the Big Write relies heavily on a talking opportunity the children should have the night before with family or else in the morning ahead of the Big Write. They would speak about their ideas and mentally prepare what they will write about. Ideally the children would then complete some VCOP warm up activities and then have a break before starting to write!

Abbotswell School Writing Blocks for Learning.docx

Writing Genre Rotations

At Abbotswell School, we have divided the genres for writing across the terms of the year. We have explained what examples each level would work on when developing those skills. The whole school focuses on the same genre at the same time. 

Click the document to the left to see our yearly rotation of genres we will be writing!

Vocabulary, Connectives, Openers and Punctuation Poster to highlight various alternatives and improvements that may be missing from a child's writing.

Listening & Talking

We use many tools and strategies to improve the listening and talking skills of each child. 

There are formal programmes such as Early Talk Boost that children can access in Nursery (ELC) and P1 and P2. 

We use Big Talk elements of Big Writing to plan and prepare and share ideas for writing, encouraging  children to speak to others at home about their writing of the week.

We plan talks and presentations within inter-disciplinary topics across the year including Pupil Council Rep. presentations to their class mates, topic presentations sharing information and knowledge to adults and peers, sharing at assemblies and listening to others there too, Christmas Shows and Leaver's Assemblies also. These are opportunities where the children must practise listening to others; peers and adults alike. This will aid to improve confidence and skills when speaking to others too, sometimes to a larger audience but also when in class within group tasks too.