At Vandyke Upper School, every teacher is a teacher of literacy and we strive to ensure that students are able to make progress in all areas of the curriculum through teaching and learning. Skills in literacy are vital for students to achieve, whether these are in reading, writing or in classroom speaking and listening activities.
This guide for parents will enable you to help your son or daughter to make progress and give you an understanding of the ways in which we expect students to share responsibility for the development and improvement of literacy skills.

Student diaries
All students receive their diaries on their first day of term.
These are an invaluable tool and a means for checking spellings and terminology in all subject areas.
At the back of the diary is a dictionary section with some commonly misspelt words and space for your son or daughter to include words that are new to them, or with which they have difficulty.
There are also pages on key terms in several subjects, including English, Maths and
Science.
In addition, students will find pages on spelling strategies, punctuation and presentation of their work.
Key words
All subject teams develop students’ understanding of key words and how to use them correctly. Teams familiarise students with these terms in a number of ways:
 Displays in the classroom
 Target and goal-setting in exercise books
 Learning objectives described and explored each lesson
 Literacy mats for reference in classwork and in preparation for Controlled
Assessments
 Graphic organisers

Whole-school marking policy
The staff has agreed a whole-school marking policy to ensure consistence across all subject areas.
Sp spelling - underline and correct (teacher to use professional judgement on number of
corrections)
// new paragraph needed here
C
capital letter needed or used incorrectly
P punctuation needed or used incorrectly
Exp unclear expression; error underlined and explained
Gr incorrect grammar (e.g. subject-verb, plurals, tense, word order)

Students are also reminded how to punctuate their work accurately:
.
Full stop - used to create an interruption to mark the end of a sentence
, Comma — used to create a small interruption within a sentence to help clarify meaning.
Used between items in a list used before a speech mark used to create a slight pause and emphasis before a joining word
?
Question mark— replaces the full stop when the sentence is a question
!
point
Exclamation mark— replaces the full stop to suggest surprise or shock or to emphasise a
: colon— used at the end of a sentence to show an answer or explanation follows, for example a list, quotation or answer
; semi-colon - replaces a full stop or ‘and’ between two or more sentences that share a theme. It is also used before a joining word when a stronger pause or emphasis is needed
....
Ellipsis - used informally to show an incomplete sentence, sometimes to build tension. It is also to show unimportant words are missed from a quotation
‘ Apostrophe - used to show a missing letter, for example, ‘isn’t’. Also used to show possession, for example, the cat’s tail
(....) Brackets (parentheses) - used to show an explanation, additional information, an inserted comment or an aside
- Dashes - as with brackets but around a less strong comment, explanation or aside
“.....” quotation marks - used to show spoken words, or to highlight odd or unusual words, jargon or slang. Also around titles when italics are unavailable
- Hyphen - used to show a word is incomplete at the end of a line and between compound words for example no-one or cold-hearted

Some words and phrases are commonly mixed up or muddled. Some examples of these are:
Homophones
Words which sound the same but have different spellings and meanings
were is the past tense of are
We were eating our tea
where is used for places and positions
Where is my hat?
wear is what you do with clothes
I wear socks
their belongs to someone they climbed into their beds
they’re short for ‘they are’
They’re going to assembly
there is about places there were huge crowds in the park
of She is a friend of my Mum
The beach was full of holiday-makers
off Take that jacket off please
Bargain today only—twenty percent off
too means ‘as well’ or ‘too much’ his hair is too long
I like Justin Bieber, too
two the number
I’d like two teas and a cookie, please
to means towards or is part of a verb
I am going to send you a text
new not old
Going to the Olympics was a new experience
knew the past tense of ‘know’
I knew I was going to have a great year
no used to refuse or disagree
No thanks, I don’t want to come out later
know regarded as the truth
I know you like your English lessons!

We are always pleased to hear from parents, so if you have any concerns or comments about literacy at Vandyke Upper School, please contact Mrs Carter, Literacy Co-ordinator.