Raising attainment in literacy in Primary 3

Context

When Glow was introduced at Touch Primary School in Fife in early 2010, teacher Kate McIntosh was keen to explore how it could be used to raise attainment in literacy in her P3 class. She wanted to stimulate pupils’ interest in using the library, to encourage pupils to read for pleasure and to explore a wider range of authors and genre.

In the P3 Book Group Kate created a survey, to gauge pupils’ engagement with, and enthusiasm for, reading. This was the P3s first experience of a Glow survey, so questions were kept simple with either multiple choice or free-text formats. Kate’s pupils and the parallel P3 class responded to the survey. The two classes are not in adjacent classrooms in the school, so having them respond to the same survey and being able to view each others’ responses worked very well. Kate and her stage partner analysed the survey responses, using the graphical responses option, and were interested in the snapshot this provided, particularly in breaking some of the gender stereotypes which might have been expected.

Kate McIntosh talks about the impact of using Glow with Primary 3

Survey response. Click to enlarge.

Moving on from the survey, a discussion board was set up with a range of questions for pupils to respond to, such as ‘What is your favourite book and why?’ Pupils from both classes were enthusiastic about not only adding their own response to the discussion board, but to read their peers’ answers too. Pupils were fascinated to see that their favourites were not necessarily other peoples’! Kate was pleased to see the wide range of authors and books mentioned and the discussion and enthusiasm generated. The two P3 classes met together for a World Book Day event, where the children brought into school the favourite books which they had been talking about on the discussion board.

Noticeboard page. Click to enlarge.

Huge interest was also stimulated through participation in live streamed video events through the BBC website. Together the pupils watched an event with the author Julia Donaldson and enjoyed creating questions and emailing them to the BBC before the event. Towards the end of the summer term, a second live event with the Michael Morpurgo was due to take place. On this occasion, pupils were able to decide whether this was an author they were interested in and choose whether they wanted to watch. Web links were posted up in the P3 Book Group allowing pupils to find out more about Michael Morpurgo and his books, and to email questions to him in advance of the video event.

In the P3 Book Group pupils also had their first taste of Glow Chat. This proved a huge hit, as few had experienced a chat room before. They responded very positively to using the chat room to discuss reading with other pupils around the school, and the experience became a great topic of conversation with parents at the end of the school day.

Ingredients

Kate created the P3 Book Group on the Touch Primary School site. She used the default web parts such as News, What’s on, Web links and Discussions. A survey web part was created and added to the Glow Group, along with the web parts for Glow Chat and Glow Meet.

Recipe

* How to create a survey

* How to add the survey to a page and customise the display

* How to set the permissions for the survey

* How to view survey responses

Impact

Kate feels that Glow has proved to be a very useful tool and has had a marked effect on pupils’ attainment. Using the P3 Book Group stimulated interest in reading and writing, with pupils keen to talk about favourites books and authors. Pupils particularly enjoyed the opportunities for  personalisation and choice offered through web links allowing them to explore further information about their favourite authors, and the option to participate in video events.