Literacy Across the Curriculum

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Literacy Across the Curriculum
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Programme

• Whats the problem?
• Whats happened so far?
• What can we do?

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(No Transcript)
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People who do not read have no advantage over
those who cannot read
Mark Twain
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Some people have a way with words Other people
not have way
Steve Martin
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Chances Chart (KS3 2004 GCSE 2006)
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GCSE 2004 A- C Boy - Girl DIFFERENCE
DT res mats PE physics, chem, biol, geog, IT,
bus studs
English /Eng lit, art, En/Ma/Sc/MFL, French, DT,
drama, RE, double award sc, maths, German Spanish
history
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GCSE 06 All subjects A-C G B difference
MATHS
Eng / media
MFL

• HUMS

DT
science
ICT
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PROBLEMS WITH LITERACY
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PROBLEMS WITH LITERACYBarrs Pidgeon

• CONFIDENCE AND INDEPENDENCE
• EXPERIENCE
• STRATEGIES
• KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS, UNDERSTANDING
• REFLECTIVENESS

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CONFIDENCE AND INDEPENDENCE

• Negative feelings and attitudes about reading and
  writing
• Gains little pleasure from reading or writing
• Little voluntary involvement in literacy activity
• Has failed at reading and writing - has poor
  self-image as a learner
• Unwilling to take risks - scared of making
  mistakes

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EXPERIENCE

• Limited experience as a reader and writer - at
  school or at home
• Narrow range of experience of text types
• Experience of only a limited range of purposes
  for writing

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STRATEGIES

• Is unable to marshal the full range of strategies
  - context, phonic, graphic, grammatical - to
  engage with and make sense of text or is
  over-reliant on a narrow range of strategies
• Cannot deploy a range of strategies for
  de/constructing text
• Immature social skills - finds collaboration
  co-operation difficult

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KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS, UNDERSTANDING( close
connection with STRATEGIES)

• LACKS KNOWLEDGE UNDERSTANDING OF
• fiction non-fiction genre conventions
• higher order reading skills - skim, scan, text
  marking
• technical aspects of writing - spelling,
  punctuation, planning, drafting
• LACKS CONTROL OVER
• self-correction
• handwriting presentation skills

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REFLECTIVENESS

• Limited / underdeveloped self-consciousness as a
  reader and writer
• Difficulties reflecting upon or articulating
  personal response to text
• has difficulty reflecting upon quality of own
  written work
• Has difficulty reflecting on own effectiveness as
  a learner
• Has difficulty in articulating intentions and
  purposes for reading or writing

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Literacy Audits

• Expression
• Opportunities for writing
• Marking of writing
• Support for writing

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Findings from Audit Strengths

• Across KS3 most students were able to
• Control structure and sequence in chronological
  writing
• Match register and form to writing
• Write in correctly demarcated sentences
• Use the apostrophe correctly
• Write fluently and legibly
• Retrieve information and evidence from texts
• Make simple inferences and deductions from texts
• Spelling was strength or a weakness - for about
  half the sample

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Findings from Audit Weaknesses

• Students either struggled with or were not
  provided with
• opportunities to
• TEXT LEVEL
• use genre conventions of a range of non-fiction
  report, recount, explanation, procedural,
  persuasion, discussion
• structure non-chronological writing effectively
• habitually plan, revise and edit own writing
• correct own mistakes
• SENTENCE LEVEL
• use paragraphs appropriately
• use a range of (increasingly more sophisticated)
  connectives
• use commas to mark sentence structure
• use commas in lists
• WORD LEVEL
• use subject-specific vocabulary for expressing
  ideas

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Concerns writing

• few opportunities provided for extended (more
  than one or two paragraphs) writing except in
  English
• students appeared not to be expected to explore
  or develop their ideas.
• few good examples of explicit teaching of or
  support for writing
• significant amounts of copying in some subjects
• except in English, there appeared to be no
  expectation that students would plan or draft
  their written work.
• presentation sometimes belied content neat work
  was not always accurate or interestingly written.

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Concerns Reading

• except in English, little evidence of opportunity
  for students to read and respond to extended
  texts.
• reading activities often based on fairly short
  text and questions
• students answers seldom included the question
  stem and often consisted of phrases or single
  words.
• students seldom required to process information
  obtained from reading or to re-present it in a
  different form.
• cloze and other DARTs activities used as end
  points, rather than as means to help students
  engage with text.

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Concerns marking

• quality of marking was variable and often lacked
  consistency both across and within subjects.
• application of school marking codes often
  haphazard.
• some teachers provided full, detailed commentary
  about subject content but
• teachers seldom provided advice about how
  students might improve work or address literacy
  issues.
• Teachers and students rarely followed up comments
  or instructions to improve, complete or repeat
  work students were seldom required to make
  corrections or to amend their work.

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Teaching

• Poor awareness of literacy demands of reading and
  writing tasks
• Poor awareness of literacy needs of students
• Little or no support for literacy at point of
  need
• Marking which is not responsive to literacy
  dimension
• Poor teacher literacy

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There is one rather significant difference
between similarity and identity chains. If two
texts embedded in the same contextual
configurations are compared, we are highly likely
to find a considerable degree of overlap in at
least some of the similarity chains found in
them. This is not an accident. The items in a
similarity chain belong to the same general field
of meaning, referring to (related/similar) actions
, events, objects and their attributes. The
lexical items in a general field of meaning form
a semantic grouping that represents the potential
for the formation of similarity chains. This
semantic grouping is genre-specific and to the
extent that similarity chains are really a part
of the total semantic grouping, they too are
genre specific. The implication is that if we
know that specific social process the field of
discourse relevant to the interaction, it will
be possible to predict that some selection from
this or that semantic grouping will appear in the
shape of similarity chains in the text generated
equally, selections from given semantic groupings
are constitutive of the field of discourse. So,
semantic groupings are logically related to
specific contextual configurations, though how
much of such a grouping will appear in the shape
of similarity chains in a particular text of a
given genre is open to variation.

• List the reasons for any difficulties in reading
  this text
• Suggest support which might be useful

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Reading for information - challenges

• Prior knowledge
• Subject- specific vocabulary
• Grammar
• Dense text

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Reading for information - support

• Create a context brainstorming, group
  discussion, diagrams, charts, summaries BEFORE
  reading
• Glossaries
• Collaborative work
• Shared reading
• Opportunities to read similar texts

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Writing

• Rewrite Doctor Foster in the style of the Old
  Testament. Comment on the folly of his expedition

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• Learning to write is at once one of the most
  commonplace and one of the most complex
  activities we ask children to undertake in
  school.
• From Better Writers, by Dr Debra Myhill,
• Courseware Publications, 2001

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Supporting Writing

• PAFFOP
• Nicolas Roberts

• Purpose
• Audience
• Form
• Find it
• Organise it
• Present it

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Build a bridge between reading and writing by
flexible use of a teaching sequence

• Establish clear aims
• Provide examples
• Explore the features of the text
• Define the conventions
• Demonstrate how it is written
• Compose together
• Scaffold the first attempts
• Encourage independent writing
• Draw out key learning
• Review

1.12
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Students write well when they

• Know why theyre doing it
• Know who the audience is
• See a good example
• Know what conventions are expected
• See someone do it well first
• Have a feel for the type of language required
• Are encouraged to sharpen and improve as they
  work
• Collaborate with others
• Have some prompts to work to
• Their first attempts are supported
• Know how their writing will be assessed
• Get feedback at every stage of the writing
  process
• Dont feel over-exposed or criticised.

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Activity

• In pairs
• You have a new Y10 group. Your school has
  provided a data set
• What might be the literacy needs of this group?
• What strategies might you use to support
  teaching and learning ?

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Whats happened so far

• 2002 KS3 National strategy Literacy Across the
  Curriculum
• 2004 Literacy in
• 2005 Literacy and Learning

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• 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

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What we might do

• Plan for a long-term project
• Appoint a senior teacher to manage the project
• Audit and identify issues and priorities
• Make some quick wins
• Set up Change Teams to trial and share what
  works
• Train teachers to teach literacy strategies
• Have high expectations
• Monitor, monitor, monitor
• Monitor

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Quick fixes

• Identify literacy demands of schemes of work
• Reading
• DARTS
• Shared reading
• KWLLS
• Writing
• PAFFOP
• Modelling / exemplification
• Prompt marking
• THINKING TIME

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Examples of DARTS
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Spelling strategies

• Break it into sounds (d-i-a-r-y)
• Break it into syllables (re-mem-ber)
• Break it into affixes (dis satisfy)
• Use a mnemonic (necessary one collar, two
  sleeves)
• Refer to word in the same family (muscle
  muscular)
• Say it as it sounds (Wed-nes-day)
• Words within words (Parliament I AM parliament)
• Refer to etymology (bi cycle two wheels)
• Use analogy (bright, light, night, etc)
• Apply a rule, e.g. Refer to a word in the same
  word family, e.g. design, sign, signature
• Use a key word (horrible/drinkable for -able
  -ible process as a key word for excess, recess,
  etc.)
• Apply spelling rules (writing, written, I before
  E except after C for brief
• Visual memory (look-cover-write-check)

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Marking policy for pupils
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Main categories of non-fiction