Literacy

I have a lot of friends who are parents of Primary School age children and many of them have reached out over these past few weeks for advice and support regarding their child’s literacy. For some, they have just realised there are gaps in their literacy knowledge and are amazed. They have said things like ‘did you know that when a c is followed by an i or e or y the c makes a s sound?’

For others, they are uncertain about the amount of support to offer their child and are stressed out beyond belief. As Daniella wrote in last week’s newsletter, during this time wellbeing trumps curriculum. If a literacy task (or any task set) is not working for your child, we understand. In saying this, I thought this newsletter article might help provide some guidance and strategies around helping students literacy development during this time.

Some do’s for parents during this time of remote learning

Encourage your child to read for pleasure - We now have the Library available for students to borrow books if they are missing physical texts. Otherwise, there is a heap of online books students can read - check out the school community padlet under reading.
Let your child choose what they read. Choice and agency are important and promote a love of reading.
Know that you do not need to correct everything in your child’s written work. As teachers, we expect to see what students can do independently (in most cases). Not only that, but it is not usually helpful if we as adults do all the editing for the child. Teachers are providing significant feedback on at least one task per student per day. Teachers in the lower year levels are moving towards verbal feedback so that students can access this directly without you needing to read it to your child. Even in class, teachers do not correct every little error in a student’s written work as there is only so much feedback/corrections a person can take on at one time.
Provide your child with a dictionary (if you can), particularly from Years 2-6. Students can then use this to check their spelling before submitting tasks and it helps them to develop independence. Also, do not get tricked by ‘How do I spell…..?’ every time your child is writing. It will drive you crazy and does not help students develop the ability to use strategies to try to work out how to attempt a word. If your child is constantly asking you this try ‘your teacher really wants to see how you can spell. Try to write the word/s as best you can.’
Allow students to fix their own mistakes. If your child is in the junior school and you notice they have made a lot of spelling errors, perhaps just select 4 to focus on (only if you want to). In doing this, we need to also make sure the student does the writing/correcting (even if you are prompting). If you are writing the words for your child, they will not learn how to spell them. If your child is older, you can apply the same strategy, however, it would also be helpful for them to write this word a few times at the back of their book to help them remember the spelling of this word.

Some don’ts for parents during this time of remote learning

Worry if a child chooses to re-read a book. I know there are some books that I like to re-read even now and as a child, I re-read books all the time. Particularly at the moment, books can be comforting and re-reading a book always provides someone with an opportunity to reconsider ideas in the text, get to know characters better, study the way an author has composed a text and practise their fluency.
Stress if a child is not using all grammatical conventions correctly, particularly during a longer piece of writing. Sometimes children (and adults) get caught up in what they are writing and do not use full stops, capital letters, talking marks, and commas correctly. This is something we are focusing on in the classroom but is a bit harder to do in a remote setting. At the moment, teachers will continue to teach editing skills and remind students to edit their work before uploading it.
Feel pressured to do your child’s work for them/assist them to the nth degree. If your child is finding the task very hard please let the teacher know.

Some do’s for our students (you may like to show your child this section!)

Try your best with each task you are given. Your teachers are thinking about your learning carefully and love seeing your best attempts.
Make sure you are reading each day! This is excellent for your reading stamina and progress.
Check your work before you upload/submit it. Use this checklist each time you complete a task that involves writing:
-Is my writing in grey lead or pen?
-Is my writing on the lines and spaced nicely?
-Is my writing as neat as I can make it?
-Have I used capital letters for the start of my sentences?
-Have I used a full stop at the end of each sentence?
-Have I done my best with my spelling and checked my spelling carefully?
-Does what I have written make sense?