Literacy

Literacy @ BSPS!

Hello BSPS community, I’d like to introduce myself to the new members of the community. My name is Maree Campion and I am the Literacy Learning Specialist at BSPS. My role is part of our whole school teaching and learning program, supporting and advising teachers and working with students to build their capacity as literate members of the community.  At BSPS we promote a joy of literacy via special events, like Simultaneous Reading Time, The Poem Forest Competition and Book Week. 

Today, I have had the absolute pleasure of speaking to students about their literacy learning in English and Italian.  Here is what they had to say:

Harry & Amina – Year 1 Italian

“Well,  we are learning about animals and what the names of animal body parts are.”

Can you give me an example?

“So, we’re doing a cow now, mucca, so the mouth is bocca, and you can put a label on the tail, coda. That’s how we practise our writing in Italian”

Giorgia & Eleanor - Year 2 English

“So, in literacy we are learning to read and write informative texts.”

Can you tell me what that is?

“It’s a text or book that tells you facts and information.  We’ve been reading about how people rescue joeys and animals.  We have also been learning about the different things, like a table of contents, glossary, index, captions, diagrams and labels.” Georgia likes the labels, Eleanor likes the facts.

“When we write, knowing the facts is hard.  When we write informative text about animals, it’s tricky to write about them if we don’t know – If we make stuff up it's just fake or fraud.”

Arlo Year 3 & Freddie Year 4 English

“We are reading informative facts, learning about history and how people came from other countries. We are learning how to work out what the subheading could be, so we read the article and have to work out what the subheading is or could be.  They should be interesting, not boring.”

“We have some grammar and spelling booklets and working together is fun, they have funny comments or jokes or rules on them. “

Annabelle Year 3 & Safi Year 4 Italian

“We are currently investigating Antonetta Cozzo, Nancy’s mum….”

Why?

“We’re doing it to learn about different questions (and vocabulary) we might find in a biography. Chi – who, vengo – someone comes, immigrazione. We have been on an excursion to Coasit to learn about Italian migration and we did a hunt to find an item.  Everything at Coasit was in Italian so we had to look for the words we knew.”

“Then we had gelato, but we had to order it in Italiano. ‘Vorrei una coppetta con mango per favore?’ ”

Rumi & Freya, Foundation

“We are learning about B, well the tracing writing sheets can help you learn the letter b. The park near me (Rumi) has a B at the start. Two b words bin and belt, if we had three words we could have a baby.  An Italian word is Banane, bocca, um, blu”

Aria Year 5 & Seb Year 6 - Italian

“Right now,  we are trying to focus on information texts – the structure, like what you need to include.  We are also learning about how an information text should be structured and what kind of language should be used.  In 3/4 it would be body, a title,  labels and paragraphs.  In 5/6 we have added a glossary. If we are writing and using a complex word, we can define it in the glossary – in  Italian.”

Here’s a challenge for you both, can you give me an example?

“Fotosintesi: Come le piante usano la luce del sole per crescere.”

Bravo!

Zoe Year 5 & Shamsa Year 6 - English

“We’re learning how to write informative text - mainly how to structure a text and how to make it flow.”

What does flow mean?

“To make it (the writing) sound right, to make it have pauses that help the reader.  Using strong words and writing strong paragraphs so the reader wants to read it & gets curious about the topic. 

First, we had  ‘the desert is hot’ so we made a more complex sentence, by comparing the desert heat with how the animals have adapted. Then we can write about those animals, so the text is in consecutive order.”

We currently have volunteers working with our reading collections. If you have some time on a Thursday at 12.30, it would be lovely to see you. Volunteers are required to check in and out at the front office.