The National Literacy Strategy
Literacy and Numeracy are the most important aspects of primary education. The government has made sure that every primary school child will be taught Literacy and numeracy every day by the introduction of a Literacy hour and a Numeracy hour into all Primary Schools (Infant and Junior) from September 1998. The aim of this new initiative is to ensure that all children develop the essential skills of Reading Writing and Arithmetic.
The National Literacy Strategy
The Target is for 80% of 11 year olds to achieve the standards of literacy expected for their age - Level 4 or above in Key Stage 2 English tests - by 2002
What is Literacy?
Literacy unites the important skills of Reading and Writing. It also involves speaking and listening.
Literate Primary Pupils should:
- read and write with confidence fluency and understanding
- be able to orchestrate a full range of reading cues (phonic, graphic, syntactic, contextual) to monitor their reading and correct their own mistakes.
- understand the sound and spelling system and use this to read and spell accurately
- have fluent and legible hand writing.
- have an interest in words and their meanings and a growing vocabular
- know understand and be able to write in a number of genres in fiction and poetry, and understand and be familiar with some of the ways in which narratives are structured through basic literacy ideas of setting character and plot
- understand use and be able to write.a range of non-fiction text
- plan draft revise and edit their own writing
- have a suitable technical discuss their reading and writing
- be interested in books, reading with enjoyment and evaluate and justify their preferences
- through reading and writing develop their powers of imagination, inventiveness and critical awareness.
The Literacy HourDuring the Literacy Hour children will cover the following:
- Word Work - recognising and sounding letters and words as well as learning to spell
- Sentence Work - Learning grammer and punctuation
- Language - Readingmins and writing fiction and non-fiction, poetry, plays etc.
The Hour is divided into 4 sections -
- 10 -15 mins - Shared Text Work : reading and writing with the whole class
- 10 - 15mins - Focused word and sentence work : the whole class will work on words and sentences.
- 20 minutes - Independent work and reading - children will work on their own or in groups developing their reading and writing skills
- 5 - 10 mins - The Plenary or Review : the teacher and class will go over the work that they have done that day/week.
The year will build on existing good practice:
- Encouraging families and young children to share books, stories and rhymes together
- Supporting those who are struggling with reading
- Encouraging young adults to read through a range of the resources in various venues
- Bring authors and readers together
- Promoting the rich variety of literature from Britain's ethnic minority communities
- Imaginative uses of IT to promote literacy
Awards ~ Reviews
For futher information or to order books E-mail: christine@e-kidsbooks.co.uk
ILLUSTRATED DICTIONARY
UK Reading Association Award Winner for
a substantial contribution to children's literacy
THE WORLD OF SHAKESPEARE
Winner
Times Educational Supplement
Senior Information Book
THE MEDIEVAL MESSENGER
Times Educational Supplement
Senior Information Book (shortlist)