Volume 1: November 2014

NOV 2014
GRAMMAR SCHOOL MATTERS
VOLUME ONE
Welcome to the first edition of Grammar
School Matters - our termly online publication
which focusses on sharing teaching and
learning topics in order to sustain success in
our 21st century grammar school. We hope
you find it a useful resource and a stimulus
for discussion and debate.
IN THIS ISSUE
Literacy Development at CGS
Homework to Support Learning
Learning Journals
SMSC in KS3 Science
SMSC in JS5 Biology
Enquiry-based Learning
Justine Solomon
Literacy is as important here
at Colyton Grammar as it is
elsewhere, despite the fact that
all students are, by definition
of basic literacy, literate. Our
aim was to develop not just
basic literacy, but also their
spoken and web-based literacy.
From this we hoped to achieve
‘advanced literacy’ within our
students which would prepare
them for further education and
later employment. We aimed
to achieve this by having a
different literacy focus each half
term (HT) whereby members
of staff help to promote different
aspects of literacy or create
documents to be shared across
the teaching staff. There are five
different literacy strands to be
covered throughout the year.
HT2: VOCABULARY
As teachers we frequently
neglect to teach vocabulary
in a manner that is explicit
and direct for our students.
We provide students with the
vocabulary they need, but fail to
teach them how to access that
vocabulary and make the words
their own. We didn’t need to
reinvent the wheel, so I gathered
a number of teaching strategies
that could be used across the
curriculum to improve our
students’ vocabulary. These
included ideas for questioning,
word games that can be used as
starters or plenaries, ongoing
classroom tasks, homework
tasks and finally a few AFL
tasks that will bring the
importance of vocabulary back
into focus. These strategies
were collected in a document
which was distributed to the
whole teaching staff, who were
asked to integrate them into
their lessons. If they had any
other tasks that developed our
students’ vocabulary they were
asked to share these in a specific
folder on our school network
where other subjects could use
them or the idea. Currently
there are examples ranging
from Geography, Psychology
and Business.
HT3: MARKING
After researching existing
literacy policies, I came across a
policy in the staff handbook for
correcting errors in a student’s
work. This had not been updated
in many years and many staff did
not know that it even existed.
As a result, I did a short review
within the working party of
how they marked errors, in an
attempt to establish a common
system. I believed that this
would give consistency across
all subjects in the correction of
errors in writing, which would
make it easier for students to
understand their mistakes and
should therefore lead to faster
progress in language skills.
An updated version was put
together and trialled by the
working party with Year 10
and 12 mocks. A short pupil
voice survey was completed
afterwards, which was very
positive overall. The comments
were applied to the marking
LITERACY
DEVELOPMENT
AT CGS
notation that will now be used
by all members of the teaching
staff from September 2015.
HT4: SPELLING
For this focus I put together a
set of weekly spelling tests to be
completed by all years in their
registration sessions. The plan
was to display the words from
Monday morning in tutor bases
and then test the form group
on Friday morning during
registration. The intention was
to raise the profile and awareness
of correct spelling - which I
believe was achieved, despite
some initial scepticism from
some students. In conjunction
with this I also organised the
inaugural inter-house spelling
bee for Year 8 students. All
members of the year group took
part in an initial spelling test
and then the highest scoring boy
and girl went on to take part in
the spelling bee in front of Years
7 and 8. It was a very positive
event, with subject teachers
from many departments taking
part.
continued overleaf...