GIVING THE KS3 WHOLE-SCHOOL IMPACT!

1
GEOFF BARTON Making an Impact with Literacy
Thurrock Literacy Conference Thursday, December
17, 2020
Download this presentation at www.geoffbarton.co.u
k
2
LITERACY FOR LEARNING

1. Why is whole-school literacy one of the most
   important things we can be doing?
2. How to achieve IMPACT?
3. How can we help learners in their reading?

3
Why do we need it?

• Nearly 40 of pupils make a loss and no progress
  in the year following transfer, related to a
  decline in motivation
• Pupils characterise work in Years 7 and 8 as
  repetitive, unchallenging and lacking in
  purpose
• Year 7 adds so little value that actually
  missing the year would not disadvantage some
  children (Prof John West-Burnham)

4
Its an LT thing
Standards are raised ONLY by changes which are
put into direct effect by teachers and pupils in
classrooms Black and Wiliam, Inside the Black
Box
Schools are places where the pupils go to watch
the teachers working (John West-Burnham)
For many years, attendance at school has been
required (for children and for teachers) while
learning at school has been optional. (Stoll,
Fink East)
5
LITERACY FOR LEARNING
6
LITERACY FOR LEARNING
DOGS MUST BE CARRIED ON THE ESCALATOR
7
LITERACY FOR LEARNING
Please don't smoke and live a more healthy life
PSE Poster
8
LITERACY FOR LEARNING
Sign at Suffolk hospital Criminals operate in
this area
9
LITERACY FOR LEARNING
ICI FIBRES
10
LITERACY FOR LEARNING
Churchdown parish magazine would the
congregation please note that the bowl at the
back of the church labelled for the sick is for
monetary donations only
11
LITERACY FOR LEARNING
Why cross-curricular literacy?
12
LITERACY FOR LEARNING
The literacy context ...

• A 1997 survey showed that of 12 European
  countries, only Poland and Ireland had lower
  levels of adult literacy
• 1-in-16 adults cannot identify a concert venue on
  a poster that contains name of band, price, date,
  time and venue
• 7 million UK adults cannot locate the page
  reference for plumbers in the Yellow Pages

13
BBC NEWS ONLINE More than half of British
motorists cannot interpret road signs properly,
according to a survey by the Royal Automobile
Club. The survey of 500 motorists - conducted
to mark the 70th anniversary of the publication
of the Highway Code - highlighted just how many
people are still grappling with it.
14
According to the survey, three in five motorists
thought a "be aware of cattle" warning sign
indicated
an area infected with foot-and-mouth disease.
15

• Common mistakes
• No motor vehicles - Beware of fast motorbikes

• Wild fowl - Puddles in the road
• Riding school close by - "Marlborough country"
   advert

16
October 2005 Key findings
17
October 2005 Key findings

• The Progress in International Reading Literacy
  Study (PIRLS), published in 2003, found that,
  although the reading skills of 10 year old pupils
  in England compared well with those of pupils in
  other countries, they read less frequently for
  pleasure and were less interested in reading than
  those elsewhere.
• An NFER reading survey (2003), conducted by
  Marian Sainsbury, concluded that childrens
  enjoyment of reading had declined significantly
  in recent years.
• A Nestlé/MORI report highlighted the existence
  of a small core of children who do not read at
  all, described as an underclass of non-readers,
  together with cycles of non-reading where
  teenagers from families where parents are not
  readers will almost always be less likely to be
  enthusiastic readers themselves

18
October 2005 Key findings
The role of teaching assistants was described in
the report as increasingly effective. Many of
them are responsible for teaching the
intervention programmes and this work has
improved in quality as a result of improvements
in their specialist knowledge.
19
October 2005 Key findings

• The Strategy has improved some teachers
  understanding of the importance of pupils
  literacy in developing their subject knowledge
  and to some effective teaching, especially in
  writing and the use of subject-specific
  vocabulary. Despite this, weaknesses remain,
  including
• the stalling of developments as senior
  management teams focus on other initiatives
• lack of robust measures to evaluate the impact
  of developments across a range of subjects
• a focus on writing at the expense of reading,
  speaking and listening.

20
Key principles of Literacy Across the Curriculum

• Good literacy skills are a key factor in raising
  standards across all subjects
• Language is the main medium we use for teaching,
  learning and developing thinking, so it is at the
  heart of teaching and learning
• Literacy is best taught as part of the subject,
  not as an add-on
• All teachers need to give explicit attention to
  the literacy needed in their subject.

21
Consistency in teaching literacy is achieved when

• Literacy skills are taught consistently and
  systematically across the curriculum
• Expectation of standards of accuracy and
  presentation are similar in all classrooms
• Teachers are equipped to deal with literacy
  issues in their subject both generically and
  specifically
• The same strategies are used across the school
  the teaching sequence for writing active reading
  strategies planning speaking and listening for
  learning
• Teachers use the same terminology to describe
  language.

22
Ofsted suggests literacy across the curriculum is
good when

• Senior managers are actively involved in the
  planning and monitoring
• Audits and action planning are rigorous
• Monitoring focuses on a range of approaches, e.g.
  classroom observation, work scrutiny as well as
  formal tests
• Time is given to training, its dissemination and
  embedding
• Schools work to identified priorities.

23
LITERACY IMPACT!
24
LITERACY IMPACT!
So what are we going to do about it at
whole-school level?
25
Focus relentlessly on TL
Standards are raised ONLY by changes which are
put into direct effect by teachers and pupils in
classrooms Black and Wiliam, Inside the Black
Box
Schools are places where the pupils go to watch
the teachers working (John West-Burnham)
For many years, attendance at school has been
required (for children and for teachers) while
learning at school has been optional. (Stoll,
Fink East)
26
Key players
Librarian
Strategy manager
Working party
Headteacher
Governors
Teaching assistants
Subject leaders
Students!
27
Key players
Strategy manager
Focus, tailor, customise See as professional
development rather than delivery Differentiate
training Emphasise monitoring more than
initiatives Use pupil surveys for learning
teaching
28
Essential literacy rooted in professional
development An example
29
Headteacher
Must be actively involved as head TEACHER Eg
monitoring books, breakfast with students,
feedback to staff Must be seen in lessons Must
be reined in to prioritise
30
Librarian
Key part in improving literacy Include in
training Part of curriculum meetings Library
should embody good practice - eg key words,
guidance on retrieving information, visual
excitement Active training for students, breaking
down subject barriers Get a library commitment
from every team Then sample to monitor it
31
Governors
Visit library, get in classrooms, talk to
students Clearly signal the literacy
focus Emphasise s/hes discussing
consistency Sample of students and feedback Part
of faculty reviews on (say) how we teach reading
32
Working party
Maintain or disband? Less doing and more
evaluating - questionnaires, looking at handouts,
working around rooms, talking to students Asking
questions What do teachers here do that helps
you to understand long texts better? Work
sampling Creating a critical mass
33
Students
Tell us how were doing Build into school
council Small groups work with faculty teams to
guide and evaluate Audit rooms for key words, etc
34
Teaching Assistants
Make them literacy experts Let them lead
training Make their monitoring role
explicit Publish their feedback
35
Subject leaders
Help them to identify the 3 bits of literacy that
will have the biggest impact Prioritise one per
term or year Join their meetings at start and end
of process Help them to keep it simple Provide
models and sample texts Evaluate Build literacy
into their teams performance management
36
So what are we going to do about it at
whole-school level?
37
LITERACY FOR LEARNING
Why do students find it harder to understand
non-fiction than fiction?
38
LITERACY FOR LEARNING

• Fiction is more personal. Non-fiction has fewer
  agents
• Holidays were taken at resorts
• During the 17th century roads became straighter

39
LITERACY FOR LEARNING
Childrens fiction tends to be chronological.
Fiction becomes easier to read non-fiction
presents difficulties all the way through
40
LITERACY FOR LEARNING
Non-fiction texts rely on linguistic signposts -
moreover, despite therefore, on the other hand,
however. Learners who are unfamiliar with these
will not read with the same predictive power as
they can with fiction
41
LITERACY FOR LEARNING
Non-fiction tends to have more interrupting
constructions The agouti, a nervous 20-inch
rodent from South America, can leap twenty feet
from a sitting position Asteroids are lumps of
rock and metal whose paths round the sun lie
mainly between Jupiter and Mars
42
LITERACY FOR LEARNING
Fiction uses more active verbs. Non-fiction
relies more on the copula (Oxygen is a gas) and
use of the passive Some plastics are made by
rather than We make plastics by
43
LITERACY IMPACT!
Subject-specific vocabulary
Approaches to reading
READING
Active research process, not FOFO
Using DARTs
44
LITERACY IMPACT!

• Teaching subject-specific vocabulary
• Identifying
• Playing with context
• Actively exploring
• Linking to spelling

45
LITERACY IMPACT!

• Approaches to reading
• Scanning
• Skimming
• Continuous reading
• Close reading
• Research skills, not FOFO

46
LITERACY IMPACT!

• Using DARTs
• Cloze
• Diagram completion
• Disordered text
• Prediction

47
England won the first corner straight off in the
first minute, and from the clearance coming out,
Gazza fired in a rocket of a volley that looked
to be just curving wide but Illgner lunged to
push it away anyhow, and we had a second corner.
And then we had a third our football was
surging and relentless we were playing like the
Germans did, and the Germans didnt like it.
Bruises and knocks, sore joints and worn limbs,
forget it theres no end to the magic hope can
work. Wright had Klinsmann under wraps Waddle
released Parker, Beardsley went through once, and
then again Hassler took the Germans first
serious strike, and it deflected away from Pearce
for their first corner but Butcher towered up,
and headed away. Then Wright picked a through
ball off Klinsmanns feet the German looked
angry and rattled. You could feel their pace,
their threat but still we had them, and the
first phase was all England. No question
England could win this. The press box was
buzzing. Gazza tangled with Brehme he got
another shot in, then broke to the left corner,
won a free-kick Lets all have a disco Lets
all have a disco. It was more than a disco, it
was history.
48
The Life of Charles Dickens Chapter 1 CHARLES
DICKENS, the most popular novelist of the
century, and one of the greatest humorists that
England has produced, was born at Lanport, in
Portsea, on Friday, the seventh of February,
1812. His father, John Dickens, a clerk in the
navy pay-office, was at this time stationed in
the Portsmouth Dockyard. He had made
acquaintance with the lady, Elizabeth Barrow, who
became afterwards his wife, through her elder
brother, Thomas Barrow, also engaged on the
establishment at Somerset House, and she bore him
in all a family of eight children, of whom two
died in infancy. The eldest, Fanny (born 1810),
was followed by Charles (entered in the baptismal
register of Portsea as Charles John Huffham,
though on the very rare occasions when he
subscribed that name he wrote Huffam) by another
son, named Alfred, who died in childhood by
Letitia (born 1816) by another daughter,
Harriet, who died also in childhood by Frederick
(born 1820) by Alfred Lamert (born 1822) and by
Augustus (born 1827).
49
DICKENS CHARLES DICKENS was dead. He lay on a
narrow green sofa but there was room enough for
him, so spare had he become in the dining room
of Gads Hill Place. He had died in the house
which he had first seen as a small boy and which
his father had pointed out to him as a suitable
object of his ambitions so great was his
fathers hold upon his life that, forty years
later, he had bought it. Now he had gone. It
was customary to close the blinds and curtains,
thus enshrouding the corpse in darkness before
its last journey to the tomb but in the dining
room of Gads Hill the curtains were pulled apart
and on this June day the bright sunshine streamed
in, glittering on the large mirrors around the
room. The family beside him knew how he enjoyed
the light, how he needed the light and they
understood, too, that none of the conventional
sombreness of the late Victorian period the
year was 1870 had ever touched him. All the
lines and wrinkles which marked the passage of
his life were new erased in the stillness of
death. He was not old he died in his
fifty-eighth year but there had been signs of
premature ageing on a visage so marked and worn
he had acquired, it was said, a sarcastic look.
But now all that was gone and his daughter,
Katey, who watched him as he lay dead, noticed
how there once more emerged upon his face beauty
and pathos.
50
PREDICTION FUN

• Brian Moore, Cold Heaven

51
1

• The wooden seats of the little pedal boat were
  angled so that Marie looked up at the sky. There
  were no clouds. In the vastness above her a gull
  calligraphed its flight. Marie and Alex pedalled
  in unison, the revolving paddles making a
  slapping sound against the waves as the pedal
  boat treadmilled away from the beach, passing
  through ranks of bathers to move into the deeper,
  more solitary waters of the Baie des Anges. Marie
  slackened her efforts but Alex continued
  determinedly, steering the pedalo straight out
  into the Mediterranean.

52
2

• Lets not go too far, she said.
• I want to get away from the crowd. Im going to
  swim.
• It was like him to have some plan of his own, to
  translate idleness into activity even in these
  few days of vacation. She now noted his every
  fault. It was as though, having decided to leave
  him, she had withdrawn his credit. She looked
  back at the sweep of hotels along the Promenade
  des Anglais. Today was the day she had hoped to
  tell him. She had planned to announce it at
  breakfast and leave, first for New York, then on
  to Los Angeles to join Daniel. But at breakfast
  she lacked all courage. Now, with half the day
  gone, she decided to postpone it until tomorrow.

53
3

• Far out from shore, the paddles stopped. The
  pedalo rocked on its twin pontoons as Alex eased
  himself up from his seat. He handed her his
  sunglasses. This should do, he said and,
  rocking the boat even more, dived into the
  ultramarine waters. She watched him surface. He
  called out Just follow along, okay? He was not
  a good swimmer, but thrashed about in an
  energetic, erratic freestyle. Marie began to
  pedal again, her hand on the tiller, steering the
  little boat so that she followed close. Watching
  him, she knew he could not keep up this pace for
  long. She saw his flailing arms and for a moment
  thought of those arms hitting her. He had never
  hit her. He was not the sort of man who would hit
  you. He would be hurt, and cold, and possibly
  vindictive. But he was not violent.

54
4

• She heard a motorboat, the sound becoming louder.
  She looked back but did not see a boat behind
  her. Then she looked to the right where Alex was
  swimming and saw a big boat with an outboard
  motor coming right at them, coming very fast.

55
5

• Of course they see us, she thought, alarmed, and
  then as though she were watching a film, as
  though this were happening to someone else, she
  saw there was a man in the motorboat, a young man
  wearing a green shirt he was not at the tiller,
  he was standing in the middle of the boat with
  his back to her and as she watched he bent down
  and picked up a child who had fallen on the
  floorboards. Hey? she called. Hey? for he
  must turn around, the motorboat was coming right
  at Alex, right at her. But the man in the boat
  did not hear. He carried the child across to the
  far side of the boat the boat was only yards
  away now.

56
6

• Alex, she called. Alex, look out. But Alex
  flailed on and then the prow of the motorboat,
  slicing up water like a knife, hit Alex with a
  sickening thump, went over him and smashed into
  the pontoons of the little pedal boat, upending
  it, and she found herself in the water, going
  under, coming up. She looked and saw the
  motorboat churning off, the pedal boat hanging
  from its prow like a tangle of branches. She
  heard the motorboat engine cut to silence, then
  start up again as the boat veered around in a
  semicircle and came back to her. Alex?

57
7

• She looked saw his body near her just under the
  water. She swam toward him, breastroke, it was
  all she knew. He was floating face down,
  spread-eagle. She caught hold of his wrist and
  pulled him towards her. The motorboat came
  alongside, the man in the green shirt reaching
  down for her, but, No, no, she called and tried
  to push Alex toward him. The man caught Alex by
  the hair of his head and pulled him up, she
  pushing, Alex falling back twice into the water,
  before the man, with a great effort, lifted him
  like a sack across the side of the boat, tugging
  and heaving until Alex disappeared into the boat.
  The man shouted, Un instant, madame, un instant
  and reappeared, putting a little steel ladder
  over the side. She climbed up onto the motorboat
  as the man went out onto the prow to disentangle
  the wreckage of the pedalo.

58
8

• A small child was sitting at the back of the
  boat, staring at Alexs body, which lay face-down
  on the floorboards. She went to Alex and saw
  blood from a wound, a gash in the side of his
  head, blood matting his hair. He was breathing
  but unconscious. She lifted him and cradled him
  in her arms, his blood trickling onto her
  breasts. She saw the boat owners bare legs go
  past her as he went to the rear of the boat to
  restart the engine. The child began to bawl but
  the man leaned over, silenced it with an angry
  slap, the man turned to her, his face sick with
  fear. Nous y serons dans un instant, he
  shouted, opening the motor to full throttle. She
  hugged Alex to her, a rivulet of blood dripping
  off her forearm onto the floorboards as the boat
  raced to the beach.

59
PREDICTION FUN

• Brian Moore, Cold Heaven

60
LITERACY IMPACT!
61
?Kick-start learning
? Dont aim for false links with main lesson
content
? No Blue Peter badges
? Do aim for coherence across starters
? Emphasise collaboration problem-solving
? Avoid writing
? Avoid the temptation to extend the activity
62
-ible -able

• www.geoffbarton.co.uk

63
Homophones Sound of Music Kylie Beethoven their
there theyre too two to pray prey

• www.geoffbarton.co.uk

64
Hard
Homophones Freeze Stand advice advise pract
ice practise effect affect Its its

• www.geoffbarton.co.uk

65
Jake began to dial the number slowly as he had
done every evening at six oclock ever since his
father had passed away. For the next fifteen
minutes he settled back to listen to what his
mother had done that day
It was on a bright day of midwinter, in New York.
The little girl who eventually became me, but as
yet was neither me nor anybody else in
particular, but merely a soft anonymous morsel of
humanity this little girl, who bore my name,
was going for a walk with her father. The episode
is literally the first thing I can remember about
her, and therefore I date the birth of her
humanity from that day.
Urquhart castle is probably one of the most
picturesquely situated castles in the Scottish
Highlands. Located 16 miles south-west of
Inverness, the castle, one of the largest in
Scotland, overlooks much of Loch Ness. Visitors
come to stroll through the ruins of the
13th-century castle because Urquhart has earned
the reputation of being one of the best spots for
sighting Loch Nesss most famous inhabitant
66
So ..

1. If its a priority, do something
2. Customise and simplify ruthlessly
3. Identify the essential (simple) skills of reading
   - eg by asking students
4. Build into school systems of training,
   observation, performance management
5. Dont forget reading for pleasure keep it in the
   public domain

67
GEOFF BARTON Making an Impact with Literacy
Thurrock Literacy Conference Thursday, December
17, 2020
Download this presentation at www.geoffbarton.co.u
k