The National Assessment Resource boasts a new quality kite-marked resource for 4th level reading, produced by the modern languages department of Douglas Academy.

Principal teacher Fhiona Fisher and colleague Victoria Henry set themselves the challenge of creating a “reading for enjoyment” assessment.

S2 pupils worked on Fantome de Cyberspace, produced by Lenzie Academy, and were asked to predict the kind of language they would need to read a story about a haunted house. In groups, they then made up a glossary of vocabulary to share.

The teacher read each chapter - apart from the final one - to the class, encouraging them to read, listen and watch in order to get the gist of the story. Each group was given a chapter to work on before doing a poster presentation to the rest of the class.

The final chapter was then read aloud by the teacher and pupils had to select the nine most salient parts of the story and represent them as a cartoon, which was then peer assessed.

S3 took a similar approach with their Jacques Prevert poem, Dejeuner du matin. The teacher read it to the class, discussing tone, theme, personae and word choice.

Pupils then hid their own copies and the teacher placed a copy for each group in various locations. Each group “envoy” had to read the poem, remember it and return to the group to dictate as much as they could remember. The aim was to rebuild the text accurately using their choice of word bank and knowledge of the perfect tense.

www.ltscotland.org.uknationalassessment- resourceresources20110325douglas-academy.