The development of pupils’ literacy skills is at the centre of Kilmoyle Primary School’s curriculum provision. The three key elements of literacy are Talking and Listening, Reading and Writing.
Talking and Listening
Our pupils’ talking and listening skills are nurtured through activities such as paired and group work, drama, circle time, role play, and debates. Stories, Poems and Values for Thinking (by Robert Fisher) are also used to develop talking and listening skills and pupils learn the building blocks of effective discussion based on Philosophy for Children (P4C). In the next three years of our school development plan we will be further developing our P4C work and utilising additional co-operative learning strategies such as Kagan Structures.
We seek to provide pupils with the core skills that enable them to read with fluency and understanding. We also endeavour to ensure that children derive pleasure and enjoyment from reading both fiction and non-fiction texts. Through FS and KS1 pupils are taught to decode through the implementation of a systematic phonics programme and comprehension skills are developed in shared and guided reading sessions. Each classroom has an extensive library and the school’s central library houses and wide range of fiction and non-fiction texts. The online Accelerated Reader programme is used to monitor and reward pupils’ reading achievements. Our comprehensive approach to reading is summarised diagrammatically in the “Reading Rope” below.
