Sept. 5, 2024
UNESCO’s International Literacy Day (ILD) aims to address worldwide literacy issues by championing literacy as a fundamental human right while reminding us all of its importance for individuals, communities and societies worldwide. In 2022, at least one out of seven adults aged 15 and above (765 million) lacked basic literacy skills. Additionally, millions of children are struggling to acquire minimum levels of proficiency in reading, writing and numeracy, while some 250 million children of 6-18 years old are out of school (UNESCO).
The theme for 2024's International Literacy Day is 'Promoting multilingual education: Literacy for mutual understanding and peace'
Without language, one cannot talk to people and understand them; one cannot share their hopes and aspirations, grasp their history, appreciate their poetry, or share their songs.
At 2Simple we want to help by raising awareness of ILD and the importance of young people gaining valuable literacy and language 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 languages and enjoy them for life.
According to The Bell Foundation, there are more than 1.7 million pupils who use EAL in maintained schools in England, and makes EAL a key characteristic of student bodies in many schools.
Within Purple Mash, there is a whole folder of resources for teachers to use with EAL. These include key words and phrases for children who are new to the country, such as All About Me and Classroom, and also includes a set of Ukrainian language resources.
All of these can be set as a 2Do, so the child can also use and practise them at home.
To build on children's English language skills, 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.
Purple Mash users can also access 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.
Purple Mash also contains resources for teaching the modern foreign languages of French and Spanish, and include songs, quizzes, pair games and writing tasks.
Resources are organised into topics so that teachers can easily find the resources they need, and there are fantastic whole class starters in the 2Challenge section of each folder.
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 also 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.
