The ABC Primary Curriculum Blog

Upper Primary students at the ABC have been taking UK standard attainment tests (SATs) in numeracy and literacy for several years. These tests are designed to help teachers assess students’ strengths and weaknesses and to determine their understanding of a subject. Teachers then reflect on the results from these tests to inform their planning for the following year.

This year the SATs will take place next week in week 8, and, in the same way as last year, the results from the tests will be included as part of the CAL grade. The English national curriculum levels will therefore be converted to CAL grade results, which will be better understood by students and parents.

In preparation for this change, UP students have had fewer summative assessments over the course of the year, which has given them more time to really understand topics or concepts before being tested on them.

The future of the SATs at KS2 continues to be debated in England. Many schools now value formative assessment more highly than summative, and, as I have written elsewhere in this blog, we use a combination of summative and formative assessment that works within El Salvador’s national CAL grade system.

Tags: Upper Primary

During the ILMP leadership programme which I completed a few years ago, I remember a very interesting discussion about classroom climate.  Yes, it is very hot here at the moment, but it is not this kind of climate that was being examined.  Rather it was the way that students feel about the environment in which they learn — the emotional climate.

We looked at a document which outlined the nine dimensions of an effective classroom climate.  I would like to reproduce the nine ideas here:

Clarity, Order, Standards, Fairness, Participation, Support, Safety, Interest, Environment.

It is very important to consider all of these factors when teaching.  The kinds of questions that we might ask ourselves might include:

• Is my classroom interesting and exciting for the students?
• Are there opportunities for all the students to participate?
• Do the children feel emotionally supported and are they willing to make mistakes?

These are very good questions to ask ourselves from time to time, questions that can help us to adjust the learning climate in our classes at the hottest time of the year!

Tags: Primary

With technology such as Skype it has become much easier to make valuable links with other schools around the world.  Indeed, time difference permitting, children can now make connections with international classrooms in real time. 

Ms Mena has been running a very exciting Skype project for the last few months.  Her second grade class have been skyping a school in the US every week.  The children have asked each other questions about their culture, school and language.  Some highlights have included US students talking to our students about the presidents of the US, and our students teaching the US students Spanish phrases and numbers. 

As part of our extensive INSET in primary, last week Ms Mena showed staff how to set up a Skype project like this with their own class.  It will be great to see more of these kinds of global connections being made throughout the primary school in the near future!

Tags: Primary, Upper Primary

The 72 Tricky Words in the Jolly Phonics Programme

The second module of the Jolly Phonics Online course that many staff in LP are taking looked at the five basic skills involved in this synthetic phonics programme: Learning the 42 letter sounds; Learning Letter Formation; Blending for Reading; Identifying the Sounds in Words for Writing and Tricky Words.

I answered the following question on tricky words: Explain why the tricky words in Jolly Phonics are particularly difficult for children to read and spell.

There are 72 tricky words in the Jolly Phonics programme.  These are all words that have irregular sounds and spellings and cannot be completely decoded or encoded using the normal phonic strategies taught in the programme.  Some of the most frequently used tricky words in the English language include the following words: I, the, he, was, and to.

These tricky words are particularly difficult to read because normal decoding strategies do not work for parts of the word.  For example, the ‘I’ does not make the same sound as the ‘i’ phoneme that is taught in the Jolly Phonics programme.  Similarly, the ‘a’ sound in ‘w-a-s’ has a different sound from the ‘a’ phoneme taught. 

The tricky words are also very hard to spell because they have irregular or unusual spelling.  In other words, the way that tricky words are pronounced is different from the way that they are encoded, which means that children find it difficult to write down the sounds that they hear or speak.  Very difficult examples of this include the words ‘laugh’ and ‘through’.

In spite of being intrinsically ‘tricky’, the Jolly Phonics programme develops strategies to make the learning and understanding of these words easier.  These strategies include introducing tricky words strategically after the 6 sets of phonemes have been taught; starting by reading the words and then writing and spelling them; specifically teaching the tricky part of the words; saying the words as they sound to help spelling and teaching the words together that have irregularities in common.

Tags: Lower Primary

Wednesday the 9th of March was Science Day in Upper Primary.  The children from grades 2 – 5 used the whole day to carry out scientific investigations related to forces in small groups. 

Children enjoyed carrying out fair tests and finding the best ways to record their results.  They also learnt about famous scientists.  

Many thanks to Mr Moore, the Upper Primary Science Coordinator, for organising such a special day of learning that I’m sure our students will not forget.

Tags: Upper Primary

Staff enjoyed a very informative INSET on March 1st.  A number of educational areas were covered including the school language policy, gifted and talented provision, ICT and reading assessments.  Staff also had the opportunity to look through their book resources with a view to next year’s orders.

Tags: Primary, Whole School

Tags: Primary

Jolly Phonics Letter Sound Strips

Jolly Phonics is central to our teaching at the ABC.  Most teachers in Kinder, Prepa and 1st Grade have now either completed or are completing a three-month course on how to teach effectively using the Jolly Phonics method.

At the end of each module the participants need to write a short assignment comment.  I wrote the following response to the question:  A reading strategy that involves decoding words is always more efficient than one which involves memorizing whole words by their shape. Discuss.

Research over the last twenty years has shown that learning to read using decoding strategies (synthetic phonics) is more efficient in the long term than memorizing whole words (look-say).  Numerous research and case studies have demonstrated that look-say methods favour only the children who have good visual memories, but create many problems for children who struggle to remember things visually.  This means that a percentage of any given class will always struggle using the look-say method, resulting in serious reading deficiencies as this group of children grow older. 

Although some children may appear to start reading quicker through memorization, this small number of children will be ‘overtaken’ by decoders in the long term.  Children who have learnt to read using only the look-say memorization method are also unable to decode new words independently; whereas the synthetic phonics method provides all children with the tools to decode and synthesize new words.  Even with fantastic visual memories, there will come a time when look-say readers are presented with new words without having the skills to decode them.  This means that children with decoding skills can work more independently and confidently, progressing in their reading at a much faster rate over time. 

The look-say method also creates difficulties for children when they are asked to write and spell unfamiliar words.  Children who have been taught using synthetic phonics have a better understanding of the ‘rules’ of the English language – how sounds are put together, and how these sounds can change.  Indeed, look-say memorization can develop very weak spellers who do not have the strategies to sound out words before writing them down.

An analytic phonics system combines both systems – look-say and phonics, but it does not go into the phonic and synthesizing detail of a synthetic phonics method such as Jolly Phonics.  Indeed, studies have shown that the decoding strategies used in analytic phonics are not as effective as synthetic phonics, with the latter’s emphasis on blending right from the beginning.  As a result, a systematic synthetic phonics method which develops children’s decoding strategies is the most efficient way to teach children how to read and write.

Tags: Lower Primary

We have some exciting ICT events coming up over the next few weeks.  This week is Internet Safety Week at the ABC, and we are using ICT and Lifeskills to make children aware of the importance of being safe on the internet.

This is a great website that we have used to support our teaching in primary this week:

Smart Rules

On Saturday the 19th of February, the ICT committee is running an INSET for all ABC staff.  In primary we are giving training on how to use smartboard and mimio technology effectively.

We will also be exploring how to use a variety of programmes in our teaching, including Stop Motion, Google Maps and Google Earth, Voicethread, Podcasts (Audacity), Animoto and Prezi.

Internet Safety SMART Rules in the Computer Lab

Tags: Primary, Whole School

Just So Stories

Over the past few months my 5th grade extension group have been studying Rudyard Kipling’s classic Just So Stories.  We started by reading several stories and discussing the style.  We were able to identify the following features:

• Repetition of certain phrases (e.g. best beloved)
• The use of magic
• An animal ends up receiving a part of its body for which it is well-known
• The animal often ‘deserves’ it because of a negative characteristic (e.g. selfishness)

Without reading ‘How the Leopard Got His Spots’ the children spent several weeks planning and writing their own story in Kipling’s style.  Then the children recorded the stories as podcasts, and some children added sound effects and music.

When they had finished their work we then read Kipling’s story and compared and contrasted their work with his!

Here are some of the children’s podcasts:

Katie

Vanessa

Guen

Carlos Rosales

Juan Carlos

Sofia

Tags: Upper Primary