Sept. 3, 2023
Literacy progress has been held back by world events over the past few years - since 2019, the share of 10-year-old children who could not read and understand a simple text with comprehension has increased from 57 per cent in 2019 to an estimated 70 per cent in 2022 (UNESCO). UNESCO’s International Literacy Day (ILD) aims to address this issue by championing literacy as a fundamental human right while reminding us all of its importance for individuals, communities and societies worldwide.
The theme for 2023's International Literacy Day is 'Promoting literacy for a world in transition: Building the foundation for sustainable and peaceful societies' and the day will invite us all to ‘reflect on the role of literacy in building more inclusive, peaceful, just and sustainable societies.’
At 2Simple we want to help by raising awareness of ILD and the importance of young people gaining those valuable literacy skills that are needed throughout life. Here we look at just some of the resources available within Purple Mash and beyond that can help young learners engage with literacy and enjoy it for life.
2Publish is the powerful, easy-to-use publishing tool that brings learning to life. Teachers and pupils can access thousands of ready-made templates covering a huge range of cross-curricular content that they are able to tailor to their specific needs. There is even a blank template if you want to create something totally bespoke.
2Publish Plus has an increased number and more complex text layouts, so is excellent for older learners.
Head to the Text Toolkit to create spelling, grammar and word games within Purple Mash. It contains five tools that allow you to create activities that teach vital literacy skills in a fun, engaging way. Because you build the activities you are able to tailor them to the needs of your class. Skills covered include sentence structure and composition, verb forms, and word classes. The Text Toolkit is also home to a Purple Mash favourite - Developing Tray, which draws children of all ages and abilities into drawing assumptions on a piece of text.
If you’d rather not build your own games using the Text Toolkit, try our Grammar Games, a series of ready-made literacy activities. To help your children fly, we’ve organised them into age groups, from Hatching Out – aimed at 5–6-year-olds – through to Soaring Eagles – for ages 10 –11.
There's also a host of grammar resources organised by year group and by theme, making it easy to find the activities you need. With a mixture of offline and on-screen resources, you can teach grammar skills in a way that best suits your timetable and class.
We’ve recently updated the Spelling Scheme of Work - it covers the entire year and spans every year group from Year 1 all the way to Year 6. The comprehensive scheme includes a 'Look, Say, Cover, Write, Check' document, a Dictation pdf and an online spelling quiz for every single week of the school year, organised neatly into half-terms.
The spelling quizzes are a fantastic way of engaging the children with their spellings both during and out of school hours. You can even make your own spelling quizzes using 2Quiz with the ability to generate score reports for individual, groups or classes.
If you don't currently subscribe to Purple Mash but would like to explore these literacy tools and resources, you can request a free trial of Purple Mash today.
Learners should be encouraged to read both fiction and non-fiction. A great starting point is Serial Mash. As the name suggests, this is a collection of serialised fiction for children from five years old upwards. There’s even a collection of books for reluctant readers.
Serial Mash is all about reading for pleasure, but it’s not just time off for the kids! Each chapter is followed by a variety of activities which not only test children’s knowledge of what they’ve just read, but also cover some of the other aspects of the National Curriculum too, such as being able to identify joining words. As well as a teachers’ guide, there’s also planned timetables and other resources to make your life easier.
You might wish to combine reading with writing reviews. The nice thing about the book review templates is that the idea of the standard book review has been supplemented by several exciting variations. For example, one template invites children to create a comic strip about part of the book, while another is about sending a postcard from the book.
In addition to the book itself, the children can turn their attention to the author, through an author fact file. Definitely worth a look! They might also want to read some of the non-fiction DK Learning books also available on Serial Mash.
If you're not currently a subscriber to Serial Mash you can request a free trial to get access to our online library and comprehension resources.
We hope you have fun this International Literacy Day. Please feel free to share any work with us on Twitter @2SimpleSoftware or @PurpleMash, or on Facebook @2SimpleUK.
