Literacy Day 2019

Literacy Day

Tuesday, 1st October 2019

To encourage: discerning reading and writing; an awareness of nuance in language; student reflection before written or read response; to question the use of absolute statements.

Among the many highlights of the day were the visit of Poet Tony Curtis and authors Denise Deggan and David Rudden.

Tony Curtis, brought poetry to life for the 3rd years.
Denise Deegan, a teenage and historical fiction author, did two creative writing workshops, the first with a small group of 6th years and the second with a 5th Year class, the central theme was the importance of character building in a story.
Dave Rudden, author of ‘Knights of the Borrowed Dark’, spoke to 2nd Years and had them enthralled for the entire session impressing upon them the value of reading for pleasure.

There was also the “Sherlock Holmes Murder Mystery Competition” which ran for a week (1st – 8th October). This was organised to promote murder mystery books and to help students engage with numeracy and literacy. Students who entered were given a murder case file which included a police report, witness statements, CCTV camera footage and a newspaper article. To keep in with the aim of literacy day, absolute statements such as ‘definitely’, ‘positively’ and ‘absolutely’ were included. Students learned about bias, inference, deduction and attention to detail. There was also a link with numeracy where they had to work out time through the time, speed and distance formula. 2nd year helped create a crime scene in the CADLC for visual effect. A word search puzzle and a crossword helped students learn legal/criminal vocabulary such as affidavit, inference etc. Art students created a body outline poster and Blackrock TV created a promotional clip.

Added to this there were ‘Crack the Code’ puzzles for all English classes and crosswords with the emphasis on the vocabulary of crime.

I thank Ms Dillon (CADLC Manager), Mr Wyer, the English Department and our co-ordinator Ms Kelleher for such a great programme.