Technology and Literacy

We have a literacy focus in the Humanties faculty. It's been our focus for a while, and for the next year we're all focusing particularly on improving the quality of our pupils' writing.

Our deputy head is on a "which" campaign. She has noticed that students tend to write in short sentences without connectives, and is concerned that the word which will disappear entirely from our language; I assume an element of hyperbole here, but she does have a point. She looked at a range of textbooks and found that they were writtne in a short sentence/bullet point style, which led her to conclude that we are not giving our pupils good examples of writing to follow.

This week, we all had to return to our faculty meeting with an activity aimed at improving the quality of pupils' writing. I have had several, though unfortunately no time yet to try any out.

Idea 1. Wallwisher

I set up a Wallwisher this week for my year 7 class who are studying the Tudors. Wallwisher (my current favourite thing) naturally lends itself to short sentences, which can then be linked together to form longer paragraphs. My intention is to use the results of the Y7 homework in class on Friday to write a long paragraph about the Tudors. I will give them a series of connectives on small cards and challenge them to write the longest sentence they can, using the facts on the board.

Further ideas to follow when I have some more time to devote to this post!