About the November 2007 issue
Welcome to the new Literacy Time online experience. We are delighted to be bringing you more online resources than ever, and all within a brand new website, designed to be more interactive and more personal to you. There are lots of new features to explore – from news stories and feature articles to reader forums, online polls and an interactive calendar. Please take a look around!
Our resources this month have an ancient Egyptian theme.
Brand new to download is a fantastic Ancient Egyptian Mystery Story Kit. Children can drag and drop settings, characters, sound effects, opening and ending sentences, connecting words, descriptive words and phrases, speech and thought bubbles into a storyboard – then use the them to tell or write an original story.
Onscreen resource 2 is a Dictionary Game. Children must choose the correct definition for a selection of ancient Egyptian topic words. The complete dictionary is available as a downloadable, printable document, too.
Speaking as a parent …
Being Editor of Literacy Time means that I probably more aware than most parents of what literacy skills my two children are learning during each term in their primary school. It also means that I am keen to support their literacy development as much as I can. So we cuddle up and share bedtime stories; we listen to audio CDs in the car (Gervase Phinn’s A Wayne in a Manger is a big hit with my two!); we talk about peculiar spellings and funny words we see around us; and although it’s much easier, I admit, to shop on the internet, we still spend hours down on our knees in the local bookstore, flicking through all those gorgeous books. But of course parents don’t need to work in educational publishing, or be teachers themselves, to help their children with literacy. Usually all they need is a little confidence, an invitation, or a few simple ideas to start them off. And this is just what headteacher Huw Thomas offers in our Feature Article on pages 4-5 of our teachers’ magazine.
