School Improvement – Raising Attainment in Literacy October 2018During the recent INSET days, teaching staff at Mulbuie and Ferintosh looked at how we teach spelling and writing.

We are taking a different approach to spelling, where we begin with hearing the word and then helping children hear and see the letter-sound correspondence. Children will do a short spelling lesson each day in class, looking at the roots of words, expanding words and building words before writing them down. Therefore spelling homework may look different to before and children will be doing activities different to the traditional Look, Cover, Write and Check.

We hope to see a big improvement in the spelling age of all children, and particularly those who were struggling a bit with spelling the way we have traditionally been teaching.

We are also developing the way that we teach writing in Mulbuie and Ferintosh. Instead of writing an extended piece each week, children will become writers that learn from other writers working together and receiving direct teaching in….

1. ImitationUnderstanding and learning or

creating the plot of a story, what happens and in what order.

2. InnovationLearning to create description, hook the reader

and use tricks and techniques to engage the reader. In these lessons, children use the text

that they learned or created together to expand, develop and learn new skills in writing.

3. ApplicationUsing what they have learned, having a go to write their own

story or part of story.