You could win a copy of Lizzie and the Birds worth €100 by simply entering your email address at the bottom of this review. The competition is for a 10-pack of readers and a Teacher’s Guide. A big thanks to Joanna for reviewing this series for Mash.ie. A random entry will be selected on 26th May 2019.
Lizzie and the Birds is a really well-thought out literacy programme which ticks all the boxes of the new Primary Language Curriculum. This programme is clearly written by teachers for teachers. It lends itself to plentiful opportunities for cross-curricular lesson integration while developing the key literacy skills in an integrated and meaningful manner.
The scheme is based around a little girl called Lizzie who has moved to a new house with her Dad. Lizzie befriends a diverse flock of birds and the story lures us into their adventures together. The explosion of colour in the illustrations along with the variety of characters in the birds, draw the children into Lizzie’s world and kept them engaged throughout the story.
The scheme is organised into a teachers book and a pupil book. The pupil book is a high quality picture book while the teachers manual is laid out into eighteen lesson plans. Each lesson plan ties into a double page spread matching the pupils book. Each spread visually details Lizzie’s thoughts and escapades through pictures and text. Each lesson plan provides ideas and scaffolds to provide children with ‘low floor and high ceiling’ activities encompassing all of the strands and elements of the PLC. For example, one lesson plan covers elements from the Oral Language (e.g.oral descriptions), Reading (e.g. predictions, questioning) and Writing(e.g. adjectives, sentence structure) strands.
The children in my class thoroughly enjoyed the adventure of Lizzie and her new friends. In oral language development, the playful use of figurative language and the rich level of vocabulary really provided very meaningful and plentiful vocabulary lessons in our room over the last number of weeks. With regard to reading, we consolidated the skills we have been building upon from the Building Bridges programme.In Writers Workshop, we based a number of lessons around the descriptive language and use of adjectives, along with focusing on direct and indirect speech. Overall, my class and I thoroughly enjoyed spending time with Lizzie and her birds.
The scheme itself is a beautiful resource to work with and fits well with the requirements of the PLC. I will use the programme again as I feel it is easily adaptable to any of the middle class groupings i.e. 1st – 3rd Class.
You can buy Lizzie and Birds from Prim-Ed by clicking here.