Our Learning Support Team have launched Literacy Lift Off among our First Class pupils.

Literacy Lift Off is an intensive programme of reading and writing which will run in our school over five week blocks over the next two terms.

The programme gives our boys opportunities to read books at their own level of competency and to build on the complexity of what they can do in both reading and writing.

With the financial assistance of our generous Board of Management, we purchased sets of graded readers specifically tailored for this reading programme. We also liaised with the Girls’ School and benefitted enormously from their expertise in Literacy Lift Off. With their advice, our Learning Support team created a bank of resources to enhance the delivery of the programme.

There are six different stations in our Literacy Lift-Off classes. Each one deals with specific aspects of reading.
The Word Work Station shows children how words work so that they can make a fast visual analysis of their reading.
At the Writing Station the boys hear and record sounds in words and they also learn to write less familiar words
At the Creative Writing Station the children work on their creative writing using visual cues and pictures.

At the Familiar Book Station the teacher every child is given an opportunity to read every day. The focus here is on enjoyment, fluency, comprehension and speed.

Our boys are introduced to a new book every day in our New Book Station.

The boys take home their readers from the Literacy Lift Off series every evening.  Parents are encouraged to listen to their son reading this book each night. They can support their son’s reading progress by asking questions about the story and characters and by asking them to be a word detective and find certain words or by helping them with tricky words.

Our photos show Ms Hughes, Ms McWeeney, Ms Hudson, Ms Smith, and Mrs Quinn delivering the programme in Ms Smith’s Class. The programme will then be rolled out to Ms O`Brien’s class and, next term it will be the turn of both Senior Infant classes to experience the benefits of this programme. Watch their literacy levels lift off!