Case studies

Literacy across the curriculum spelling evening

How the Key Stage 3 National Pilot links into our school's own priorities

Sharon Howells, head of English at Edlington School, Doncaster, and Judith Gill, Key Stage 3 literacy consultant, explain how they used the Literacy across the curriculum Spelling and vocabulary module as a basis for a spelling evening for parents, children and teachers.
Edlington is a mixed comprehensive school with 1,200 pupils. It serves a former mining community as well as several rural and suburban villages.

In common with several areas in Doncaster, many students have limited horizons. One of the school’s priorities is to raise educational aspiration; working closely with parents is crucial to fulfilling this aim. Edlington’s Staff and Parents Guild works actively to promote events of an educational nature which will help to achieve this goal.

How we used the Key Stage 3 cross-curricular Spelling module

The primary purpose of the evening was to introduce parents of new Year 7 pupils to the new style and content of the English curriculum. They had previously been issued with an information leaflet about Key Stage 3 English, which pointed out that the nature of written work in particular would change. The leaflet explained that the Key Stage 3 National Strategy had moved the emphasis towards teaching English skills in lessons, and that parents may expect to see a wide range of types of writing in their children’s books in future.

The publicity for the evening promised a practical demonstration of the spelling strategies their children would encounter both in English lessons and across the curriculum. Additionally, participants would experience the new teaching style and structure currently recommended to English teachers by the Key Stage 3 Strategy.

Key Stage 3 support materials used

Having become familiar with Key Stage 3 Literacy across the curriculum modules we decided to use module 4 - Spelling and vocabulary, since it is less technically complex than the 'English' equivalent unit. However, alterations were still necessary in order to remove those features aimed specifically at teachers and make the material suitable for our audience.