THE HEATH SCHOOL – LITERACY PROTOCOL
A STEM CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE AND LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT SCHOOL
Rationale
The development of literacy skills across all curriculum areas is vital. Effective Literacy across the
Curriculum will not only develop students’ ability to:
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Write for a variety of purposes and audiences, collect information, organise ideas, draft,
edit and write accurately to show “what they know” across subject areas
Access information and read fluently with understanding and comprehension
Speak and listen effectively across a range of contexts, developing their ability to adapt to a
range of demands and negotiate, evaluate, hypothesise, present information and extend
and clarify their ideas and thinking
Remove a potential key barrier to learning
but will also have an impact on their self- esteem, motivation and ability to work independently. We
believe that we should equip our students with the necessary transferable skills to be fully literate
in the 21st century and, as such, literacy is at the heart of the school’s core values and we
recognise that all teachers should
“demonstrate an understanding of and take responsibility for promoting
high standards of literacy, articulacy and the correct use of standard
English, whatever their specialist subject.” Teacher’s Standards 1st September 2012
Priorities and intended outcomes
Although it is right that key literacy skills in reading, writing, speaking and listening should be
taught primarily in English lessons, there is a clear intention for these skills to be reinforced and
applied with accuracy across other subjects.
Key Aims to:
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improve standards of learning and achievement;
support students’ learning in all subjects by helping teachers to be clear about the ways in
which their work with students in their subject areas contributes to the development of
students’ communication skills;
develop a shared understanding between all staff of the role of literacy in students’ learning
and how work in different subjects can contribute to and benefit from the development of
students’ ability to communicate effectively;
raise students’ own expectations of achievement, thus raising standards;
develop students’ confidence and self-expression;
promote knowledge and understanding of the students’ standards of achievement and
assessment in reading, writing and speaking and listening, and the identification of any
areas of strength and weakness.
1
H Newcombe
THE HEATH SCHOOL – LITERACY PROTOCOL
A STEM CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE AND LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT SCHOOL
Short term aims
All curriculum areas/leaders to:
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display, where possible, specialist terminology in classrooms;
use the correction code for marking, addressing and supporting issues in key literacy areas;
ensure that development of literacy skills are highlighted in Schemes for Learning and that
these SfL are shared with the Lit Coordinator and ensure that assessments will reflect the
literacy focus highlighted.
have a Literacy Champion, to work with the Literacy Group on promoting and embedding
literacy skills across the school;
monitor literacy in their subject area as part of book/work scrutiny and evaluations to be
recorded in I & O;
provide desk top aids (dictionaries, glossaries, where appropriate)
monitor and evaluate literacy in lesson obs.
Specific Strategies to include in planning, teaching and learning
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Highlight the importance of subject specific literacy with students
Highlight the links between reading, writing and speaking and listening
Identify key reading strategies to use when reading
Assessment
 Where appropriate, teachers will comment on the literacy skills demonstrated by students
as part of on-going formative and summative assessment. Success criteria will be made
explicit to pupils and may form part of the termly S & T assessment of students’ work.
 Departments may take students’ literacy skills into account when giving feedback to parents
 Departments will demonstrate high expectations over the standard and presentation of all
written work
 Assessment of students’ literacy skills will feed into future planning
 Departments will comment on Literacy as part of their I & O reviews (refer to staff Literacy
handbook).
Responsibilities
Literacy co-ordinator will:
 Work with SLT to audit current provision, determine priorities, plan strategy and advise key
literacy objectives to be targeted.
 Ensure effective development of whole school policy and practice
 Establish communication and liaison between curriculum areas and opportunities to
develop and share good practice through leading the Literacy Group
 Establish communication and liaison between the school and stakeholders, e.g.
parents/guardians and outside agencies, to raise awareness
 Ensure that parents are informed of the Literacy objective and suggest strategies that can
be used to support their son/daughter at home.
 Monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of Literacy work across the school with SLT
 Facilitate and lead CPD
 Oversee intervention
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H Newcombe
THE HEATH SCHOOL – LITERACY PROTOCOL
A STEM CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE AND LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT SCHOOL
Teachers across all subject areas will:
 Adopt a consistent approach to teaching literacy skills in lessons by integrating (where
appropriate) the key literacy objective/s and strategy/s
 Be familiar with and where appropriate implement a range of strategies aimed at equipping
students with the necessary literacy skills to succeed (refer to staff Literacy handbook).
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Departments will:
 Encourage a member of their Fac/Dept to be a Literacy Champion who will work with the
Literacy group to improve literacy within the curriculum area. The Literacy Champion will
be responsible for disseminating strategies within their own department and also providing
feedback at cross-curricular meetings
 Indicate in SfL where skills will be explicitly taught
 Invest in resources, where appropriate.
 Check readability of texts (refer to staff Literacy handbook).
Teachers of English will:
 Provide support to other departments as appropriate
 Make students aware that literacy skills are transferable to other subjects
 Provide opportunities to highlight literacy through a range of events e.g. INSET, Literacy
Group etc.
Parents will:
 Encourage their children to use the range of strategies they have learned
Students will:
 Take increasing responsibility for recognising their own strengths and weaknesses and
identifying next steps for improvement
Monitoring and Evaluation
The Literacy Co-ordinator will monitor progress regularly and will report back to staff, parents and
students. The following methods will be used:
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Work sampling
Observations and learning walks
Student interviews
Scrutiny SfL
Data analysis
Literacy trails
I&O
Minutes of meeting
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H Newcombe
THE HEATH SCHOOL – LITERACY PROTOCOL
A STEM CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE AND LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT SCHOOL
Long Term Objectives (2012 – 2013):
Reading strategies with a focus on:
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Skimming and Scanning
Reading for understanding – select and retrieve
Promoting reading for pleasure
Writing strategies with a focus on:
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Subject specific word
Improving vocabulary – desk top aid use (thesaurus, dictionary, Free Rice), where
appropriate.
Speaking and Listening strategies with a focus on:
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Promoting the active listener (refer to staff Literacy handbook).
Reinforcing correct spoken grammar
Long Term Objectives (2013-2014):
Writing strategies with a focus on:
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Writing Frames to scaffold pupils responses
Accurate use of punctuation – punctuation focus per term
Reading strategies with a focus on:
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Support idea with evidence from the text – PEE (refer to staff Literacy handbook).
Reading for inferred meaning
Reading for pleasure
Speaking and Listening strategies with a focus on:
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Encouraging participation
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H Newcombe