I'm a little ahead of the course calendar only because it's coming up to end of term and I want to be sure I get my final lesson taught before the inevitable disruption!

Our timetable has now changed so I no longer have the same class I was teaching previously. This means my Unit 7 lesson will be to a class who have had no prior input around Scots. However, they are an older cohort (S3 instead of S1) and I would say a higher percentage have difficulties or lack confidence around literacy. Therefore, an opportunity to discuss the key concept that "Scots does not have a standard or one correct answer for how it should be written" might open up interesting discussions from this class.

My plan is to frame a discussion around Michael Dempster's question "Hou dae A best write sae thit fowk ken hou tae read oot whit it is that A’m writin?". We'll then look at a handful of examples of different words from Borders, Doric and Shetland. In most examples, two of the words are the same, so does that mean the third is 'wrong'? In one case, all three are slightly different (one is just a switch of vowels), so which one is 'right'? I hope the initial discussion will mean I can circle back around to the idea that comprehension is more important than standardisation.

I know this doesn't touch on the rules which do exist within Scots nor really tackles the fundamentals behind the differences in pronunciation but I anticipate that the lesson will serve as an introduction to emphasise that Scots stands as its own language.