www.oakgrove.milton-keynes.sch.uk

across the curriculum

InnovateIssue 2, May 2012

Literacy

the teaching and learning magazine for Oakgrove School

Welcome to the second edition of the Oakgrove teaching and learning maga-zine: Innovate!

With the renewed focus on literacy across the whole school curriculum, the idea is for this edition of Innovate to focus on strategies that will not only promote literacy in all subjects, but also con-tinue to promote independent learning amongst our students.

The TELL group have been working on a variety of strategies to embed literacy in lessons, which are summarised in our first feature article.

We also have a feature from Ian Tett that explores the ways in which literature can be used to enthuse and inspire pupils

with themes from the Geography curriculum.

Finally, in our new feature ‘On another note...’, Sally Newton takes a look at a variety of revision strategies from across the school.

I am very grateful to all those who have contributed to this edition: Ian Tett, Sally Newton, Elizabeth Lockwood, Jonathan Tarrant, Dan Spencer, Niamh Bland, Alan Nicholl, Amanda Gibbons, Claire Sadler and Robin Green.

We hope that you enjoy reading about the wonders of literacy!

Charlotte.

In the spotlightAs a starter activity, hand out new key words/difficult terminology for the lesson to each student. They read each definition and turn it into their own words.

Play music and ask students to move around the room (dancing optional). When the music stops, students turn to the nearest person and teach them the new word verbally and in their own words.

Students take notes from each other and prepare to move off around the room again to music, teaching the next person the 2 definitions they now have...Great for actively engaging students in learning new vocabulary and also for promoting independence and speaking/listening skills whilst having fun with music!

CHawker.

Students as teachers

of new vocabulary

Punctuation is a matter of life and death...

Ok, so punctuation isn’t literally a matter of life and death but when you’ve got to teach Year 9 how to use commas (again), you start to become desperate for some drama and excitement.

I ask for some volunteers to come up to the front of the class to take part in an obstical course. (This is, of course, imaginary and all part of my desperate attempt to make grammar interesting.) One of the volun-teers is blind-folded whilst the other one has to follow written instructions to navigate their partner around the obsticals in front of them. As they make their way through the maze of fire balls, barbed wire and metal spikes(!), they finally arrive at a massive hole in the ground that goes as deep as the moulton rock at the centre of the earth.

The first time that the blindfolded student arrives at the hole in the ground, the student reads the following instruction: “Don’t stop”Of course, the phrase above will tell the blindfolded student to carry on moving...cue shocks and gasps as they fall into the hole.

At this point, I pause the action and rewind time to save the student by harnessing the power of punctuation! I write the phrase above on the board and ask the students to suggest how we could save the life of the blindfolded student, simply through adding some punctuation. Eventually, this leads to the creation of: “Don’t, stop!”

The addition of the comma and exclama-tion mark have miraculously saved the life of the blind folded student and all students become entralled with the power of punc-tuation...well, some do but at least the others will start to see the point of why punctua-tion is a crucial part of making the written word clearly understood.

The power of a comma to completely change the meaning of a sentence can also be ap-plied to other aspects of our lives:

“Buy macaroni, cheese and fish” or

“Buy macaroni cheese and fish”

“Removing the dead flowers from your garden and sweeping paths can help to sell

your house”or

“Removing the dead, flowers from your garden and sweeping paths can help to sell

your house”

“I cooked, Tony bought the wine and then we watched a film.”

or“I cooked Tony, bought the wine and then

we watched a film.”

Well, I think that’s enough fun with punc-tuation for this time!

Enjoy the rest of the magazine,

Charlotte.

TELL: cross curricular approaches to

literacy

Match the command word to the definition:

Dan Spencer - understanding key words from exam questions

Use this sheet to define key words and support correct use of vocabulary in longer answers:

Elizabeth Lockwood - the origin of words

1) Each student has this sheet2) We then identify the name the symbol and the explanation of the name E.g. Cobalt : Co : From the German word for Goblin3) We consider the logistics involved in cutting out and resort-ing all the pieces of paper and all the words and decide that is too tricky4) I introduce the idea of colouring the three matching pieces of info – so that we can track them easily. Goblins being green means we colour the three cobalt related boxes in green (dark green – because we are going to use a light green for Chlorine as it is a pale green gas)5) We look through the name explanations for colours and use black for carbon, brown for bromine, purple for iodine and red for Hydrogen (because acids are acidic due to their ability to dis-sociate Hydrogen ions and strong acids turn pH paper red). I use colours on worksheets requiring matching statements from two columns as it is far easier to follow than drawing lines between the matching statements.

Jonny Tarrant - the talking chain

Inspirational literature

Ian Tett takes us on a tour through the stories that he uses to contextualise the Geography curriculum

I have always said to my GCSE and A level classes that you can gain an A* in Geography by reading a quality newspaper each week. My original brief for this article was to highlight Ofsted’s increased focus on literacy and to provide some generic advice on the promotion of literacy skills within planning and lessons. However, those of you that know me well will realise I have a rebellious side and I have de-cided to approach this article from a different, but arguably more important, perspective. The big gin-ger lad from Wiltshire who walks the corridors has a secret passion: he loves reading and it all started with George Orwell and 1984!Although the Ofsted grade descriptors provide the main characteristics of an ‘outstanding’ lesson, what

really makes a lesson clearly ‘outstanding’ is how teachers communicate their subject knowledge to develop the understanding of the students. The aim of this article is therefore to highlight just some of the ways in which I have used literacy to develop students’ understanding, not because I have to, but because I want to and because I believe that the opportunity for using novels, travel writing, poems and newspapers is both undervalued and neglected. This can be as basic as using travel brochures to highlight persuasive writing through to Khaled Hosseini’s portrayal of life in Afghanistan before and during the occupation by the Taliban in The Kite Runner.

‘As each slave was pushed down the hatch, he was seized by a waiting seaman and forced to lie down on the deck in his allotted place, head towards the side of the ship, feet towards the centre, until both sides of the deck were lined with them. Each man had to go in a space six feet by fifteen inches, and now I was why there had been so much argument over space; if they were jammed up tight, or made to lie on their right sides, you could get ever so many more in.’

‘When Gorbachev was finally informed of the severity of the accident, he was also told that there was a severe risk of a second, far bigger explosion that was in danger of wiping out most of Europe. Miners from all over the country were rounded up and sent to try and stem the danger. More than 500,000 people were eventually to face this invisi-ble enemy in one way or another. Meanwhile, sixty hours after the accident , nobody knew anything about it. It was only when Sweden started getting high radioactive readings in rainfall that the alarm was raised.’

My first text is George MacDonald Fraser’s fictional character Harry Flashman and his cowardly acts in Flash for Freedom. Although the Flashman novels have been criticised for being brash, they do con-tain some very accurate description from various passages in history. For example, the extract above is a very powerful way to highlight the monstrous actions linked to the slave trade.

My second choice is perhaps even stranger: Dom Jolly and his book The Dark Tourist. As part of the Year 13 Geography course, we explore possible technological solutions to areas such as energy pro-vision and agricultural developments. However, we also highlight some examples of when technology has gone wrong, such as spraying children on

American beaches with DDT in the 1950’s through to the catastrophic Chernobyl disaster of 1986. Dom Jolly’s strange brand of tourism takes him to Kiev and then a day visit within Chernobyl’s 19km exclusion perimeter zone. I have used short extracts with students from this book to highlight the hu-man impact of this nuclear disaster and to demon-strate the legacy that threatens Europe to this day.

Finally, I will leave you with a piece of poetry that I have used at both GCSE and A level to explore the impact of tourism. After annotating and analys-ing the poem above as a class, students then go on to produce their own tourism poems with many providing an excellent insight into the social, moral, spiritual and cultural impacts.

On another note... Sally Newton explores effective revision techniques from

across the school.

My favourite technique involves mini-boards. I get students to work in pairs and write the information they need to recall on the boards. They then test each other by gradually wiping away more and more of the information. With languages, it’s often good to slowly wipe individual letters of words away so that students are eventually left with just the first letter of every word, to be used as a prompt. Niamh Bland

I just say exactly the same things but in a louder voice. Alan Nicholl

My favourite revision activities are “carousel activities, where students work independently through tasks, managing time and consolidating their knowledge and understanding of the topic – they are also fun and easy to manage”. Dan Spencer

Read – Cover – Write – CheckThen repeat over and over and over again.It’s boring as hell, you get through loads of paper, but it works!!! Robin Green

My favourite is currently modelling key processes out of plasticine on a sheet of A3 and then annotating around the model the keywords and concepts. Claire Sadler

I think the “collective memory” game is a great way to revise: students sit in teams towards the back of the room and each have a sheet of paper at the front with key revision mind map (same content on each sheet). Then members of each team take it in turns to come up to the front, look at the piece of paper for 1 minute, then travel back to their team to deliver the information that they can remember in 1 minute. It is important that the people travelling back to the group do not draw/write the ideas themselves – they must teach the other mem-bers of the group the key pieces of information that they can remember. Each group member visits the paper (more than once if required) in order to build up a full picture of the revision material – they are in competition with each other and the best/most closely matched result wins. Charlotte Hawker

Split class into groups of three. Each group takes a different topic. On a large sheet of paper they must communicate as many different facts/points as possible but must only use 5 words on the whole piece of paper so use, codes, pictures, links and anything they can think of to clearly communicate the ideas.Next, one person in the group must move to the next group and take notes. They present this back to their group and add to their piece of paper. This car-ries on until they’ve been around all groups.Set strict timings for each stage.By the end every group has a good coverage of each topic and the presenting/taking notes/thinking of ways to communicate on their diagram, should rein-force this revision.Amanda Gibbons

Circus Time in the Teacher’s Tool Kit by PAUL Ginnis is a brilliant revision activity where you design a range of tasks for students to undertake. Students then move around different work stations throughout the lesson. A good way to ensure that students move to different stations is to give clear time deadlines and to have a chart with each student’s name on and each activity station listed. Students have to tick off the work stations they have visited. Sally Newton.

Back when I was at school revision activities involved taking notes, reading through those notes, making notes on those notes and then reading the notes on the notes you’d just made! Complicated stuff! However, today’s student needs something a little more stimulating to help them recap their learning. Revision also provides an opportunity for the teacher to identify any gaps in knowledge and to create new exciting activities to address these gaps or confusions. Revision can get stale though and it is important to offer students a variety of activities that they can use in their own time and in their own way. Below are several teachers’ favourite revision activities provided here for you to use and adapt in your own lessons or simply to share with students to give them some ideas for revising your subject.