Literacy Cluster Meeting Jan08

Literacy Cluster Meeting: The big drive is on subject leadership development. The focus is on speaking and listening which needs to be developed in order for writing to improve. The ideas must come from the cluster and Ruth Blake is there as support. New Framework: The objectives have been reduced into 12 strands. In the paper copy you can see these, arranged year by year or in strands. Slimming down the objectives has made them more generic but they do now need interpretation. Progression is made clear in the new framework as you can see the objectives year by year. A lot of the statements do need mediation, e.g sentence structure. Paper copy does not have units of work. Strong emphasis put on mapping out the year in terms of saying when you will teach certain units and which fit in best with topics across the year. It is heavily suggested that you teach the narrative units in order but see which genre fits in best with topics over the year. e.g Instructions lends itself to DT. It will be useful to have an overview of when the units will be taught across the whole school. This may loan itself to support with resources. Staff will need to plot his against our curriculum map. Ruth suggests that for mixed age children, have a rolling program A and B year. Teach lower year units one year and higher year units the next? Emphasis also put on monitoring and evaluating pupil data from targets, pupil interviews, tracking sheets and work scrutiny – what should we do with this info? Corsham Regis felt that they would like some input on guided writing in small groups to help improve writing looking at direct teaching and addressing needs of a particular group of children – planning for learning. We discussed progression in the mechanics of writing and agreed that sentence level and word level work should be a constant drip feed.

Ruth felt that I should make a list of the consistant things I should be doing so I feel more confident in my role. She also suggested identifying strengths and weaknesses and strategies for literacy across the school. She thinks I should know what is being embedded in each class and what isn’t. Action Plan: 1. Helen Dean and myself will liaise regularly to compare our progress. We will give each other support with scrutinising, levelling etc. 2. Map out the genres and units against the curriculum by 19th March. 3. To be more confident in the role of literacy subject leader. 4. To have an awareness of where subject sits within the school – where are we now? Strengths and weaknesses? 5. Get together the following for meeting on 19th March – results of pupil interviews, samples of levelled work, range of planning from all teachers, tracking sheets, targets – to give an awareness of where the subject is across the school and what it is showing us. Ruth made a point of saying that the new framework should be used as a supplement to what we are already doing. She pointed out the 5 key areas on p7 and emphasised how all the different areas are now aligned. She also highlighted the learner sections at the back as being very useful. Avoid slide 11 suggestions as to jargon full for planning. She made a point of saying that there is not much to be found for word and sentence but that this should be drip fed according to needs of class. ICT suggestions are just that – suggestions. The restrictions upon schools are understood and where the units are very ICT heavy simply adapt. EG could the children work towards an assembly presentation instead or a power point presentation? In the units, where there is an IWB reference it means there will be good support material on the site. TO plan units follow:

Literacy planning (on left of page) choose your year Choose genre eg narrative click on unit on the left teaching sequence Then go into resources and see all the resources, Back to planning for main menu.