Information and critical literacy visits - Curriculum for Excellence Early and First Level

Since January I have been busy visiting primary schools and a nursery as part of the work I’m doing for Learning and Teaching Scotland CfE Literacy Team – Real and Relevant – Information and Critical Literacy Skills for the 21st Century Learner’ (Early and First Level).  

The visits have been amazing with lots of information and critical literacy activities based around some of the CfE learning outcomes and experiences.

I have written them up as postings / case studies for the National Information Literacy Framework (Scotland)

• Questioning – Kilmacolm’s innovative Blooming Blooms approach - children and parents are introduced to the benefits of questioning. Questions were based on Bloom’s Taxonomy and produce in conjunction with the parents linked to familiar fairytales.


• Critical Literacy @ Lasswade Primary School  - the school formed a working group to plan and implement Critical Literacy which is seen as “the way that we interact with and make meaning from different texts” and “involves the reader analysing and engaging with a text”.


• Information Literacy in Junior (Primary) 2 St Margaret’s School, Edinburgh - children working on a research activity finding facts about food and also an evaluation activity evaluating the Picallili Monster they had made from food. Linked to Health and Well Being Curriculum for Excellence Experinces and Outcomes.  

They join the visit I did in December to St Margartet's School but this time to see Information Literacy in Junior (Primary) 1 .

I am now bringing all this together incorporating it into a CPD Toolkit / Resource Pack and will be presenting at LILAC 2010 (The Librarians Information Literacy Annual Conference) Limerick - Begin at the Beginning: Information Literacy in Primary Schools.

My thanks to the teachers and the schools, the local authority education resource services / library and information services for their assistance.

LILAC 2010

I see the LILAC 2010 draft programme for the parallel sessions are now posted on the LILAC 2010 website and that my presentation is first up in the parallel sessions for the conference.

Monday 29th March 2010

3pm - 3.45pm Begin at the beginning - Information Literacy in primary schools  - Christine Irving

4.25pm - 5.10pm  Employability and information literacy: a review of a training programme - John Crawford

Tuesday 30th March 2010

12.10 - 12.40 Developing an information literacy community of practice in Scotland - Lesley Thomson (the program has Thomson with an p)

12.45 - Scottish Government information literacy in the work place - measuring impact -Morag Higgison and Jenny Foreman

Will need to have a look and see who else is presenting plus presentations of interest.

Information Literacy in Primary 1

A couple of weeks ago I spent the day in a Junior (Primary) 1 class as part of the work I'm doing for Learning and Teaching Scotland CfE Literacy Team - Real and Relevant – Information and Critical Literacy Skills for the 21st Century Learner’ (Early and First Level). The day was amazing with lots of information literacy activities based around some of the CfE learning outcomes and experiences. For example:

Finding and using information: Early Level

I listen or watch for useful or interesting information and I use this to make choices to learn new things. LIT 0.04a 

The children aged 5 years old listened to a chapter (chapter 4 I think) from a book about an owl finding out about night and darkness.

The book - The owl who was affraid of the dark

They had to listened for a specific piece of information which they then had to remember. Questions were asked to ensure that they had heard and remembered it. Later on in the day they were each given a worksheet and had to draw a picture to represent what the chapter was all about. The teacher then went round each of them and asked them to complete a sentence with information they had heard. Some repeated the information exactly others put it into their own words. Whatever the child said the teacher transcribed it onto their worksheet.

Other examples of activities included:

• selecting books in groups to find information about a particular night animal that the group had chosen i.e. a fox, badger, bat.

With the help of the teacher reading the text the children decided on the 4 most important facts about the animal. Later each group told the rest of the class what they had found.

• 
  
  art of the week where they had to look at a picture of a piece of art Rodin's Thinker and say what they thought it was about. It was amazing to see then looking at it, thinking about it and then giving their thoughts.

I could go on but will end there. My thanks to Mrs Lisa Bonar and her class at St Margaret's School in Edinburgh for allowing me into their world. Discussions regrading the sort of things that would be useful to teachers regarding their own information literacy was also covered. It has certainly helped my thinking for the work ahead of me and I look forward to using this knowledge along with other experiences of Primary 2 and 3 to come in the new year.

This is my last blog of the year so Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone.