Literacy

Orkney project: Orcadian Reading Clubs (ORCS) - P1/2

An image of little kidsreading on the floor

Sheila Headley's story

This is the first time Sheila has been closely involved in the management of an LTS project. It was made clear from the start that the funding was to provide teachers with the opportunity and time to be out of their classes for baseline assessments, study, research, piloting, professional dialogue, planning, evaluating, assessing and reporting. Without that time the project would not have been as successful.

There was time to think ‘out of the box’, to consider other areas of the curriculum which would be complementary and to involve current philosophies from Curriculum for Excellence and Parents as Partners. With these ‘added value’ aspects there was also time to evolve, continually improving and extending.

Background

In the summer term of 2006 the teacher of the P5/6 class read up about literacy circles and the Book Detectives materials were purchased. She discussed book choices with her class and the headteacher arranged for separate funding to buy sets of books.

Literacy circles were set up and timetabled twice a week. After a term the pilot was evaluated and amendments were made before ‘rolling out’ to classes 4 and 7.

With such a positive response from the children, there was a wish to extend the philosophies further but no clear path to go down. The signpost came from the need for children to be able to talk. The better children could talk in groups, the more successful literacy circles would be. We needed the younger children to be better skilled in listening, talking and thinking.

Aims

Nothing in schools happens in isolation. Through an early years science initiative the Nursery teacher had recently purchased a wide range of exciting science resources with an obligation to incorporate them into the ethos of home-school partnerships.

The Nursery teacher was at a loss to know how to make the most of these exciting activities. She already had a successful ‘Book Bag’ system for home lending in operation but was unsure about the practicalities of lending science activities in a similar way.

At this point Sheila was invited to a Literacy conference in Glasgow, along with her headteacher. During a table discussion about literacy circles, Sheila realised that best way forward would be to motivate listening, talking and thinking by:

  • improving the skills of the above
  • adding the element of self-evaluation
  • increasing the children’s interest in books
  • involving parents
  • increasing children’s choices and sense of responsibility.

This could all be done through the use of science activity boxes and parents coming in to school to work with small groups of young children.

Process

Preparation for this involved:

  • P1/2 devising their rules of talking and thinking
  • inviting all parents of pre-school, Nursery and Primary 1 and 2 pupils to come to a meeting about volunteering
  • the training of parents
  • the preparation of the science boxes, using themes
  • the designing of activity sheets for parents to use
  • the purchase of books to complement the themes
  • the compilation of good quality questions to go inside books in the kits
  • the development of a workable structure for the parent sessions
  • the provision of a system of feedback from the parents and the pupils
  • the decision about which age group to work with
  • the supervision and monitoring of activities.

Although there was nothing new about putting questions into books, it allowed the teacher time to consider quality questions that would enrich and widen discussion, not just test memory or listening skills.

Good quality questions guided parents towards a better shared experience with their children and everyone benefited.

Outcomes

The science groups had been running for several months. We were seeing improvements in talking and thinking. It was now time to give reading a higher profile.

Encouraged by the training of the parent groups, Sheila was now ready to train P7 pupils to work with small groups. The P7 class was very familiar with the literacy circle format.

On a Friday afternoon P7s have ‘Golden Time’ - a precious window of free choice. When we asked the P7 pupils if any of them might like to help the P1/2 class with a younger version of literacy circles during this time, every single member of the class volunteered! It was amazing and their reaction said a lot about how they felt about literacy circles. 

Next steps

The P7 pupils will carry out a survey using individual questionnaires with the younger children.

Their responses will be studied to assess attitudes towards:

  • the pleasure of reading and discussion
  • book choices
  • the importance of talking and thinking
  • the effect on the reader.

Each P7 pupil will have two children in their group. P1/2 pupils will choose a book from a selection appropriate for their reading level. They will practise reading most of the ‘script’ from the book at home but will not actually take the books home. This avoids children memorising the narrative from the pictures and means they are seeing the pictures ‘fresh’ within their groups on the Friday.

  • This project will need good support from parents at home.
  • We will need to carefully watch the responses of the less able readers.
  • We will need to keep the structure simple for the P7 pupils.
  • We will monitor effectiveness of group work at all stages and decide on next steps.
  • We will study ‘Asking Better Questions’ by Ian Smith, using our enhanced knowledge to further improve our developments.
  • We will carry out post-project assessments, consider sustainability and write final reports.