A Term of Literacy Activities Planned, Ready to Go! (Year 6)

Are you thinking about all the work you’ll have to do over the holidays to get organised and prepared for Term 3? Stop!

If you’re a Year 6 Teacher, you’re in luck. Our brand new student-facing magazine, What’s Buzzing? has you covered with a whole term of literacy activities planned for you at the click of a button!

You’ll be fist pumping and putting your feet up in no time!

Okay, let me tell you some more… This isn’t just a magazine!

It’s a collection of text types in one download. Download 50 literacy activities in the form of task cards relating to the magazine content!

It’s 10 weeks of literacy rotations planned and ready to go.

Want to know more about this fantastic educational magazine? Read Emma’s blog, (New) What’s Buzzing? – Magazine for Students.

Literacy Rotations – Not Just for the Early Years

Traditionally, literacy rotations have been a thing seen in the early years’ classroom. However, the same concept can work perfectly well in the upper years. Don’t be afraid to give it a go!

Implementing literacy rotations in your classroom doesn’t have to be a time-consuming task or consist of ‘busy’ work. By using this curriculum-aligned magazine, rest assured your students will be doing work that is going to enhance their literacy learning.

Where to Begin?

1. Firstly, you’ll need to place your students into small groups – this can either be levelled groupings or mixed ability groups.
2. Decide if your students will rotate in their small group to the different ‘learning stations’, or they can work independently at their desks.
3. Provide each group with a name so they can easily identify their group and task each day (sticking to colours is probably the ‘coolest’ option for older students!)
4. Set up a simple display so that your students know what activity they are doing on each day (utilise our group activity wheels).

Use a split pin in the middle of the spinner so that you can easily spin to see what group is working on what activity.

Check out our blog How to Effectively Organise Groups in the Classroom, for more resources, hints and tips for managing literacy groups.

Literacy Activity Stations for Upper Years

This magazine saves the day again! The task cards that are available are very cleverly split into five different literacy topics:

• Writing
• Language
• Comprehension
• Reading strategies
• Higher-order thinking

Ta-dah! You have your literacy activity stations ready to go!

Note: I would sit with the ‘Reading Strategies’ group. Depending on their level they may read to themselves and then highlight the main points.

How to Set Up Literacy Rotations

Pick one article from the magazine to focus on for the week!  Then, you’ll need to work out how you will distribute the articles to your students.

Here are some suggestions:

• Print a copy for each student to use.
• Print 1 or 2 copies per group on some thick white card to use again and again.
• Airdrop the magazine to your students iPads.
• Send them a link to the flip-book option of the magazine.

Once your students have got access to the article, the rest is fairly easy, here’s a suggestion for how your week may look:

• On Monday, as a class, look at the chosen article and complete the ‘before reading’ activity on the ‘reading strategy’ task card.
• Read the chosen article as a class. Discuss the text type and the author’s purpose.
• Move onto the first rotation activity (if you have decided to do ability groups – take your lower group of students first to read and focus on their reading strategies).
• Tuesday to Friday – students rotate through the different activity stations.

Note: As you have completed the ‘before reading’ as a class the ‘during reading’ and ‘after reading’ tasks can be completed in the small group ‘working with teacher’ station.

Go Digital!

Don’t forget, if you are keen to save time, ink and paper, you can display a digital version of the magazine on your interactive whiteboard or one-to-one device using the online flip-book.

What People Are Saying

“I downloaded the magazine this morning and airdropped it to all my students’ iPads. They were thrilled to bits to get it. We haven’t had much time to go through it yet, but the response has been very positive so far. They especially like the idea of being able to do the word search using the highlighter feature in iBooks. I love the way you have included different types of task cards so that we can choose one that suits our focus.”

– Jodie Walton

So, what are you waiting for… download the What’s Buzzing? Magazine today!