Literacy Evening

On Wednesday,  28th November,  Junior School parents were invited to a Literacy Evening.  While it was impossible to cover all that literacy encompasses in one evening, the presenters chose three pertinent areas. Parents were treated to a snapshot of how we teach phonics by Mr Adam Tesdale, strategies for encouraging reading and spelling by Mrs Emma Newton, and learning English as a second language by Mrs Ester Keuning.  The evening began with a short welcome by Mr Murray Fowler (Second Master) and Mrs Robinson (Head of Junior). Parents then spent 25 minutes in each classroom interacting with the teacher and fellow parents. 

Adam Tesdale conducted a delightful workshop on the teaching of phonics where he used the Smart Board to demonstrate how he stimulates children’s learning. Parents then became their children as they took turns to interact with the technology.  At various times throughout the session,  parents could be heard singing, punctuated by gales of laughter.  Watching parents singing “a, a, ants on my arms” as they made their fingers crawl up their forearms was quite a treat!   

In the session on reading and spelling, Emma Newton demonstrated some interesting strategies she uses to encourage children to have fun while they are learning spellings. These included “Rainbow Words” where the child writes over a spelling word seven times in the seven colours of the rainbow. She also demonstrated “Pyramid Spelling” where the child writes the first letter of the word at the top and then two letters in the second row and so on until all the letters are used. These fun strategies were well received by parents, many of whom had been to school when spelling was taught by rote and was certainly not fun.

In Ester Keuning’s session, she began by reading a children’s story to the assembled parents in French, a language that no one spoke, but one she speaks exceptionally well. She took great pains to make her delivery devoid of expression, gesticulations or sharing of pictures. Inevitably not one of the parents understood what on earth she was talking about…….until that is; she re-read the story with all the expression and meaning one would normally use with language learners. This sent a very clear message to parents that learning a new language is not easy. The power point that followed provided parents with a wealth of information of not only how children learn a second language but also how long it takes to be able to speak like a native. This was quite an eye-opener for some parents.

The evening ended with questions and answers over refreshments in the Atrium. This was an excellent beginning to what we hope will be a series of evenings, in the next few months, when we are able to share the vast expertise of the Junior School teachers with the parents.  Certainly, those parents who took the time to return the questionnaires left us in doubt that they could see the benefits of the resources we are using to teach their children.