Scoil Íosagáin Literacy Initiative

“Scoil Íosagáin: One School, One Book.”

The initiative has a three-pronged aim:

1. To strengthen our whole-school approach to Literacy planning.
2. To explore the huge potential of a Picture book in assisting / experimenting with Primary Language Curriculum (PLC) planning
3. To help embed the 4 pillars of our Changemaker identity in a whole-school fashion

So how will it work?

Across this school year, every class from Junior Infants to 6^th Class, including our Special Classes, will be given the opportunity to engage with the same picture book over the course of 1 week. Children will engage with the text in school (for Literacy, Art, Drama, SPHE etc.) and they take the book home for reading every night, reading with/to their parent.

The book we have chosen is “The Invisible” by Tom Percival.

It’s a really thought-provoking and uplifting short story, beautifully illustrated, about a child living in poverty who decides to be effective. It tackles contemporary themes and issues such as:

• Displacement
• Poverty
• Fuel shortages / Cost of living.
• Social isolation.
• Gratitude
• Power of positivity

The story is also a fantastic means of exploring the 4 pillars of our Changemaker Identity:         
   

Empathy, Teamwork, Creativity, and Leadership

So, what will we do?

Teachers will make themselves familiar with the short text as soon as possible to get ideas flowing.

A pack of ideas for each of the class levels will be prepared: Infants / 1^st + 2^nd / 3^rd + 4^th / 5^th + 6^th. This pack will have Literacy activities, suggestions for integration opportunities with other curricular areas, links to explicit PLC Learning Outcomes, and prompts for Changemaker activities. Teachers in the same year groups might will meet as a group in advance, to plan some simple activities together.

Obviously, as the age profile of the pupils increases, there will be opportunities for more sophisticated responses to the text. The book presents fantastic opportunities for debates, Drama responses, U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child in SPHE etc.

At the end of every week, the class will be asked to produce something as a response to the text. This could be in the form of:

• Book reviews
• Diary entries
• Readings to younger pupils
• Writing a sequel
• A poem
• A piece of art
• A dramatic reading
• An upload to Seesaw
• A letter to the author etc etc.

A Feedback form will be completed where pupils and teachers will be asked for their opinions on the book and the project as a whole.

We are looking forward to seeing the whole school engage with this project! We feel it has great potential, not only as a whole school literacy project, but as a whole school opportunity to promote our Changemaker ethos, and we hope that teachers, pupils, and parents will enjoy it.