Connectives For Children

St Columba's novel idea to encourage reading

September 21, 2011 by Sharon Liptrott, Dumfries Standard Wednesday

Dehorned read school books are set to be a missing feature in the P6 / 7 class at St. Columba RC Primary School thanks to the introduction of latest technologies.

The school of 60 pupils in primary Shawhill road came with an original idea to encourage reading.

It is among the first in the region to introduce e-readers in the classroom.

The system downloads the books on the machine forever, without the need for expensive or pocket books hardbacked that must be replaced regularly because they are damaged by handling.

Months of fundraising by the parents' council has to buy Kindles that can be used by students in school and hopefully at home.

It will help you keep up with demand of enthusiastic readers of the school and the new novel technology will appeal to those who need more help with their reading.

Principal Barry McIntyre said: "Children are excited about this project because they use state of the art eReaders. I am convinced that once the novelty wears off the Kindle, students receive a reading experience improved access to a wider range of excellent reading material. Features in the Kindle allow children to highlight sections of text, if for example they were asked to identify the alliteration, the connectors of good character or motives. This supports other school developments as detectives read or write up."

He added: "The Kindle is proving to be a motivational tool for reluctant readers and we hope to expand the use of eReaders through school. We are grateful to counsel parents who have been pioneering the idea behind and funds provided.

Big Writing « Mme g.c.

 Work, /often with too high of an opinion of their pupils’ work. She noticed the students who were  under achieving, and especially the ones that teachers had given too high a grade, were failing for the same reasons. Problems appeared to be common. Ros decided to develop a standard which could be used by teachers to more accurately assess their pupils. It was from this Ros created the Criterion Scale, which takes a more An additional facet of big writing is that the pupils are taught to speak during Big Writing session and at certain other times during a week. The idea behind this is that if a child learns to speak properly, it will lead to fewer errors in spelling and grammar. These Big Writing sessions are advised to be consistently held during a chosen period, with the recommended being 1.5 hours across morning break plus daily ‘stocking fillers’ (5 minutes at the end of other lessons). Through Big Writing pupils are encouraged to be ambitious, to see where they need to improve their work and pay attention to their use of V.C.O.P., the toolkit for writing at a higher level. Stealing and borrowing are also encouraged when pupils see elements of V.C.O.P.in the work of his peers, as they wish. Ros Wilson developed his scale to standardize the evaluation criteria of more than twenty thousand pieces of writing for children between October 1999 and October 2002. As a development project associated short-term goals for children, it became apparent that there were "four generic target" for writing, vocabulary, connectors, plugs and punctuation VCOP. This was true regardless of age or level of writing skills. Further work and evaluation led to the realization that the four generic target "push" as writing skills of students grows.

Wilson was able to refine her method during a period working in Qatar, whilst helping to establish an English speaking school near the city of Doha. All of the staff were trained to employ her method for teaching writing across the school and the results were remarkable. Upon her return to the U.K., she published her first book with Kirklees LEA and subsequent titles documenting the method with Andrell Education Ltd.

The Boxcar Children, Collector's Edition

Water for elephants, a novel

The Case for Christ, A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus

Looking for Alaska

The Case for God