New Waltham Academy Pupil Voice

Literacy

We value our pupil’s voice at New Waltham Academy and have now held our first Pupil Voice afternoon. As Literacy leader, I had a group of children from years EYFS to Year 6.  The time together provided the opportunity for children to share their thoughts and feelings regarding reading and writing with each other, as well as myself.

February 2024

In our pupil voice this term, we focused on what the children enjoy about their literacy lessons. Teachers also held discussions with the children about what they had voiced previously (see February 2023) and actions subject leaders have made, to act upon some of these things. Children understand that leaders cannot change everything, but that their voice and opinions are taken into consideration.

February 2023

What do you think of reading?  Below is a summary of comments made.

• Helps your imagination
• Helps you learn new things
• Calming, relaxing, you feel free
• Takes you to new worlds
• Books paint stories
• Makes me happy
• Reading is wonderful

What do you think of writing?  Below is a summary of comments made.

• Fun
• Like reading other children’s work
• Peer assessment useful
• Like learning new vocabulary and writing descriptions

Which learning are you most proud of?  (Below are quotes from children themselves.  They brought their books to the discussion and shared their learning.)

• “Insect report – I used good vocabulary”
• “Report – because I wrote lots and tried my best”
• “Greek diary – because I used good punctuation and laid it out nicely”
• “Letter writing in EYFS because I wrote my letter by myself”
• Pandora writing because my writing was neat and descriptive
• “Three Kings – because it was neat”
• “Report – because I wrote more than normal and designed my own creature so I had more ideas”
• “My diary because I used good language” 

What knowledge have you gained over this year? Below is a summary of the discussion.

• Commas, past tense, expanded noun phrases, brackets, fronted adverbials, colons, plural possession
• Learnt about Suffragettes, Alma, poetry
• The use of non-negotiables
• Learning new vocabulary
• Neat handwriting
• How to write an introduction and glossary
• How to answer comprehension questions

Things I would like more of.  Below is a summary of the children’s thoughts.

• Help with spellings
• Space – tables get crowded

First, we discussed the question 'What is Literacy?' and we collected our thoughts and ideas. We gathered these together by working collaboratively and created a word cloud using all of the words that we associate with literacy. These ideas are displayed below: