LITERACY PROGRESS UNITS (LPUs)
CASE STUDY OF TWO LEICESTERSHIRE SCHOOLS
By Brenda Ainsley, KS3 Literacy Consultant
Literacy Progress Units
For information about the LPUs, visit the Leicestershire Literacy web site at
www.leics.gov.uk/education/ngfl
Appendix 1 is one of the pages taken from the site.
The Study
Nationally, the results of the Y7 Progress tests in the summer of 2001 were not
encouraging. Most of the schools that took part were pilot schools, although some
others (including some Leicestershire schools) were involved. In Summer 2001,
schools were again able to choose whether they took part in the tests. In
Leicestershire, most did not.
I felt that whether or not schools took part, it was important to gauge the extent to
which students who did the Literacy Progress Units had made progress.
This information would be useful in helping schools to:
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Provide feedback to students and their parents;
Provide LPU ‘tutors’ with information;
Increase the extent to which teachers across the curriculum perceive their
involvement with the process;
Provide assessment for learning in terms of Y8;
Contribute to monitoring and evaluation of Literacy Across the Curriculum and of
Intervention in particular;
Provide a point of comparison with external testing.
Two schools agreed to take part. The study does not pretend to be controlled or
scientific, but rather provides a snapshot of efforts to monitor and evaluate in two
schools. The schools are:
1. Roundhill Community College, Thurmaston. An 11 – 14 mixed high school. NOR:
777. Students in the school did not sit the progress tests. 24 students were in
the sample for this study.
2. Manor High School, Oadby. A 10 – 14 10+ school. NOR: 919. Students at this
school did sit the progress tests. 29 students were in the sample.
How the study was set up
Both schools were anxious that teachers across the curriculum were informed about
which Y7 students were doing the LPUs and what they would be doing in the 18
sessions. This was achieved by:
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Sending all teachers of Y7 the list of participants;
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Photocopying the contents page of the relevant LPU(s);
Providing a breakdown, by curriculum area, of the materials used in the LPUs, eg
all the science- or history-related materials.
In addition, at Roundhill School, teachers were also sent a copy of the assessment
form (Appendix 2) in the spring term so that they would know what to expect later in
the year.
Gathering information
In the summer term of 2002, after the completion of the LPUs, the assessment forms
were sent to all relevant Y7 teachers. To minimise paperwork, they were required
only to circle ‘1’, ‘2’, ‘3’ or N/A.
1 = no progress made by the student
2 = some progress, but not consistent
3 = consistent and obvious progress
N/A = if there had been no opportunity to do this type of work
We felt that we could not ask teachers to do this in respect of every aspect of the
LPU(s), so narrowed it down to 4 main areas of each LPU.
Although both schools taught more than one LPU, at Roundhill School we focused
on:
1.
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Writing Organisation
Paragraphing
Use of connectives to signpost writing
Comparing and contrasting
Structuring an argument
2.
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Sentences
Capital letters and full stops
Clear, unambiguous sentences
Use of active and passive verbs
Variety in sentence structure
And at Manor School we focused on :
1.
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Sentences
Capital letters and full stops
Clear, unambiguous sentences
Use of active and passive verbs
Variety in sentence structure
2.
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Reading between the Lines
Inference and deduction
Visualisation
Prediction of possible endings
First and third person
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The findings
I must repeat that this study can not be regarded as conclusive in any way. The
teacher assessments may vary from teacher to teacher, or between the schools.
Whether this is less dependable than an external test, giving a window on a short
period on one day is debatable, of course…
The results should be useful to the schools in all the ways mentioned in the first
section and at Manor School will provide a useful comparison with external testing.
School
Roundhill
Roundhill
Manor
Manor
LPU
Writing
Organisation
Sentences
Sentences
Reading
Between the
Lines
1s
33 (18.8%)
2s
116 (65.9%)
3s
27 (15.3%)
5 (2.8%)
33 (20.9%)
19 (14%)
128 (72.7%)
102 (64.6%)
89 (65.4%)
43 (24.4%)
23 (14.6)
28 (20.6%)
1. Findings in the 2 schools are very similar, although there was a much fuller
response at Roundhill, generating more data.
2. There is a predominance of 2s, which is in encouraging in that some progress
was generally made. On the other hand, teachers are saying that this was not
consistent; this is clearly an area for improvement.
3. When looking at individual students’ scores, some made much more progress
than others. Also, some groups seemed to score more highly than others. The
two schools will want to look at this more closely as there may be implications
about who/where/when these were delivered.
4. Although various students were rated ‘3’ for certain sections of an LPU, of the 53
students in the sample, only ONE was rated consistently as a 3. This clearly
leaves room for improvement (see recommendations). However, no student was
consistently rated as a ‘1’. Without baseline data, it is not possible to interpret
this finding further.
5. There is a point of comparison between the schools with Sentences, with a
greater proportion of 2s and 3s at Roundhill. This could be due to the unscientific
methods employed, but there may be something to be learnt.
6. Roundhill might conclude that Sentences was more successful, whereas at
Manor it was Reading Between the Lines. It could be argued, however, that the
students were already most proficient in those areas… Ideally, there should be a
base-line assessment at the beginning of the academic year.
7. Several staff had used the ‘N/A’ option. This will sometimes be inevitable, but the
‘connectives’ column in Writing Organisation had more of these than I would have
expected… It would appear that even though non-fiction writing has been a
literacy priority in one of the schools, 5 of the responding teachers had circled this
option, implying that they did not teach aspects of non-fiction writing. This could
mean that work remains to be done to help teachers across the curriculum to
understand the part their subject can play in the teaching of writing.
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External testing
Manor school entered their students for the external ‘Progress Tests’. A commitment
had been made early in the year and it was felt that it was important to ‘see this
through’. The results were not as good as the school had hoped for, but there was
evidence of progress for many students. This reflected the findings of internal
monitoring.
Involvement in this study generated additional information from within the school that
could be offered to pupils and parents, to set alongside the results of the external
tests. The school’s information had the advantages of:
 being based on teacher assessments across the curriculum;
 providing information about ongoing progress, rather than information gathered
on one day, under test conditions;
 giving information that was useful as formative assessment.
Conclusion
1. This small study would suggest that students did, generally, make progress. This
may have been due to the LPU(s) they were taught, to their English teaching, to
the increasing emphasis on literacy across the curriculum, to their increased
maturity or to a combination of the four factors. It is impossible to make that
distinction, even at National level.
2. The predominance of 2s, followed by 3s, suggests that something positive is
happening for these students; their participation in LPUs seems to have been a
positive event.
3. Consistency, however, is an important issue. Students can become quite
proficient in their LPU sessions, but teachers may not pick this up in their
lessons. There is still work to be done in helping teachers to reinforce skills and
in providing opportunities for practice in their lessons.
4. Students who are selected for LPUs need a lot of help with ‘linking the learning’
across the curriculum; this can only be done by their teachers, who need to be
well-informed about what is happening in the LPU sessions. Opportunities for
reinforcement in lessons should be taken wherever possible.
Recommendations for schools wishing to use this approach
1. Ensure that all teaching staff, including form tutors and Year Heads, are as
involved as possible.
2. Cross-curricular reinforcement is vital. Early in the academic year, give
information to the whole staff about:
 What the Literacy Progress Units are;
 Their benefits to students and to teachers across the curriculum;
 Who will deliver, when and where (class lists);
 Details of content of relevant LPU(s) (contents pages are sufficient);
 Cross-curricular materials that are used in the LPUs;
 Their role, as teachers of literacy, in reinforcing the learning;
 Monitoring and evaluation that will take place, eg through the teacher
assessment form.
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Information can be disseminated through:
 INSET days;
 Bulletins;
 Briefings.
It is also useful in this respect to draw the pool of LPU tutors from teaching and
teaching assistant staff across the curriculum, where possible.
3. Keep parents involved.
4. Set up a rewards system.
5. As LPUs are completed, issue the teacher assessment form; this will provide all
teachers, including English teachers, with valuable assessment for learning.
My thanks go to the staff at both schools, most particularly to Joy Leadbitter
(Roundhill) and Brenda Heathcote (Manor) for all their help in designing and
conducting this study.
Brenda Ainsley
July 2002
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Appendix 1
LITERACY PROGRESS UNITS
What do they cover?
There are six LPUs:
Writing Organisation (planning, organising and shaping writing effectively at
word, sentence and text level)
Sentences (using a range of sentence structures effectively and punctuating
them usefully)
Information Retrieval ( locating, extracting and evaluating information from a
range of non-literary sources)
Reading Between the Lines (using inference and deduction to interpret literary
texts)
Phonics (applying knowledge of phonics to spell words correctly in their own
writing)
Spelling (making use of spelling rules and conventions and having strategies
to improve their own spelling)
It is most unlikely that any student will complete all of the LPUs. Scrutiny of
student data will reveal which unit(s) a student needs to do; probably there will
be one or two only.
LPU students are not learning support students; they should need only a
boost in certain areas to help them to gain access to the curriculum.
LPUs are very much cross-curricular in content. The sessions last only 20
minutes and it is important that reinforcement takes place across the
curriculum. Subject teachers therefore need to know:
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which of their students are taking the LPUs
what will be covered (a copy of the contents page would be helpful)
The more subject teachers know about the skills their Y7 students are
working on, the more they should be able to reinforce and practise those
skills with them, regularly, across the curriculum
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Appendix 2
Exemplar documentation
Literacy Progress Units (LPUs)
As you will know, we have been teaching LPUs to some Y7 students this year. The
students were chosen because they did not achieve L4 in their KS2 English SAT. They
are not ‘special needs’ students, but their insecure literacy skills are likely to mean that
they are not able to access the curriculum effectively.
I enclose lists of the students doing LPUs along with a copy of the contents page(s) of
the appropriate LPU(s) to you earlier in the year. It is vital that these students are
given opportunities to practise their literacy skills across the curriculum, ‘linking the
learning’ into all subject areas. The LPUs use materials from across the curriculum to
help students to make these links, but obviously it would help them if their teachers
were also to make brief reference to subject-specific LPU materials when this is
appropriate.
I also enclose 2 small packs of photocopied materials taken from the LPUs ‘Sentences’
and ‘Writing Organisation’. It would be of great advantage to LPU students if you were
able to remind students of the work they did in their LPU classes when appropriate
opportunities arise.
I am anxious to do all we can to maximise the effectiveness of the LPU classes to these
students. As I said earlier, improvement to their standards of literacy can only increase
these students’ access to curriculum content.
Later in the year, I will contact you again to gather your views about progress made by
our LPU students.
If you have any queries in the meantime, please do ask me.
From: person in charge of LPU delivery, eg Head of English
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Literacy Progress Units (LPUs)
It is important that as a school, we identify the extent to which students who
have been taught the Literacy Progress Units (LPUs) are making progress
across the curriculum.
1.
Please could you circle below the extent to which you are able to determine (from
the student’s work) whether they have made progress.
N/A
1
2
3
4
If you have not had an opportunity to do this type of work.
No progress.
Beginning to make progress,
Clear evidence of some progress, but not consistent
Consistent and obvious progress.
a). Writing Organisation
Students’ names
Paragraphing
1 2 3 4 N/A
Use of connectives
to signpost writing*
1 2 3 4 N/A
Comparing
contrasting
1 2 3 4 N/A
Structuring
argument
1 2 3 4 N/A
1 2 3 4 N/A
1 2 3 4 N/A
1 2 3 4 N/A
1 2 3 4 N/A
1 2 3 4 N/A
1 2 3 4 N/A
1 2 3 4 N/A
1 2 3 4 N/A
1 2 3 4 N/A
1 2 3 4 N/A
1 2 3 4 N/A
1 2 3 4 N/A
Variety in
sentence
structure
1 2 3 4 N/A
*eg ‘however’ ‘therefore’ ‘In addition’
b). Sentences
Students’ names
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Capital letters
and full stops
Clear, unambiguous
sentences
1 2 3 4 N/A
1 2 3 4 N/A
Use of active
and passive
verbs
1 2 3 4 N/A
1 2 3 4 N/A
1 2 3 4 N/A
1 2 3 4 N/A
1 2 3 4 N/A
1 2 3 4 N/A
1 2 3 4 N/A
1 2 3 4 N/A
1 2 3 4 N/A
1 2 3 4 N/A
1 2 3 4 N/A
1 2 3 4 N/A
1 2 3 4 N/A
2.
You will remember that in the Spring Term, information was sent to
teachers of Geography, RE, English, History, Science, PE and PSHE.
These were small packs of cross-curricular materials taken from the
LPUs ‘Information Retrieval’ and ‘Writing Organisation’:
a). If you teach any of the aforementioned subjects, I should be very
grateful if you could indicate below the extent to which these materials
helped you to ‘link the learning’ from the LPU sessions into your teaching.
Your name
Curriculum subject
To what extent the materials
were helpful to me
b). To what extent did it make any difference to students’ progress,
having the ‘link materials’ in the Spring term?
3.
What else might I have provided you with to help students doing
LPUs to make more progress with reading and writing in your
curriculum area?
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