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Most people outside primary education have little idea about the amount of time and effort teachers spend on planning and
completing Literacy Hour sessions and reports.Tired of the hours spent on paperwork, Geoff Broadbent, literacy co-ordinator at Lepton Church of
England School in Huddersfield, decided to develop a software program that would make life easier for teachers. The result is Literacy Complete, which Geoff reckons saves him three hours of planning a week. Geoff
Spoke to his Local Education Authority – Kirklees – about Literacy Complete. It was so impressed that now about 80 local schools have the program installed and the LEA is marketing it. So what's so good about it?
The main point is that Literacy Complete delivers what it promises and really does save teachers a great deal of time. It contains a database of all the national literacy objectives and, by using a simple drag and drop system, teachers can create lesson plans, organise literacy hour
sessions and prepare reports for headteachers, school inspectors or parents.
Literacy Complete comes with an excellent instruction manual, which clearly sets out the
disc's contents and the way it can be used. Installation is simple, and you don't have to be a computer wizard to use it
– the user interface is simple and there is plenty of on-line help. The program is divided into five main areas: what is being taught, when, how and to which pupils and how performance is to be measured.The
first step involves setting up a study group. By clicking on an icon at the top of the screen, you can create individual pupil record "cards", which include the child's name, their national curriculum level and
literacy objectives. Clicking on the tabs at the top of the pupil card allows teachers to make general notes, check objectives and see the child's position on a learning curve. After creating a study group, the
next step is to set up teaching topics (such as note-taking or pat tense) in the form of study units. Each topic includes a list of objectives which can be selected and dragged and dropped into a study unit window.
The study units can then be dragged into a graphical planning window, which is in the form of a calendar. You can shorten or extend the length of each study unit by clicking on a toolbar. The learning curve lets
teachers compare a pupils predicted progress with their actual performance, and enables teachers to change the work plan if required. The work plan can also be printed out, and a pupil's attainment can be logged and
printed out as a report. This program is a joy to use. There are no fancy graphics and no distracting animations: everything on screen is there for a purpose. Literacy Complete was designed for a specific problem and solves it well. Click here for more quotes |