Literacy Tree

At DCS, we use 'Literacy Tree' to inform our planning. Literacy Tree provide sequences of detailed lesson plans. They are based on a wide range of high quality and significant children's literature chosen to engage, challenge and support children to be critical readers and confident and informed writers.

All National Curriculum requirements of grammar, spelling, vocabulary, literary language and composition are embedded leading towards a variety of purposeful and exciting shorter, longer and extended writing outcomes where the audience and purpose is clear.

Take a look at some snap-shot samples of writing from across each year group...

Author Visits at DCS ...

Helen Haraldsen ('The Writer in Wellies')

Helen Haraldsen, local children's author, also known as the 'The Writer in Wellies' conducted a workshops across school.

During Helen's visit to our school, we learnt all about the behind-the-scenes work involved in taking a story from first draft to a published book.  We discovered all the stages a story goes through, in order to be 'publication ready'. We even got an opportunity to edit and revise some pages out of Helen's current book that she is writing.

Seeing a real person speak openly about the ups and downs of their writing career allowed us to raise our aspirations and realise that achieving goals is possible to anyone willing to put in the work, wherever they're from and whatever their strengths and weaknesses are. 

Helen emphasised the importance of self-motivation, discipline and perseverance: traits that help us succeed in our education and lives.

Andy Tooze ('The Poet from the Peaks')

Andy delivered an exciting, whole school poetry experience.

His sessions were dynamic and interactive, involving speaking, listening, reading, writing and drama. He read poems from his books, answered our questions about stimulus, form and content. Andy gave us a variety of simple, helpful hints to enable us to compose our own poems using some poetic devices such as repetition, onomatopoeia, rhyming words...

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Letterjoin

At DCS, we follow and use Letterjoin. Letterjoin is an online program which supports children in their development of handwriting and letter formation. This program is accessible to all ages from Nursery to Year 6. It allows the children to refine their handwriting skills and practice these in a fun, interactive manner.

Each child has received a log in to access this site at home. 

http://www.letterjoin.co.uk/