The story so far...
The story so far.....
Literacy has become an increasingly integral part of learning since September. There have been significant improvements in the CPL offered to staff, the interventions for students and the inclusion of literacy in lessons. The October INSET day was Literacy focused, bringing together CPL about LUCID (a reading assessment tool), Listening Skills and Direct Vocabulary Instruction (DVI). This has given staff an initial framework to bring literacy more explicitly into their lessons and will now be supported with Department Planning time for implementation.
All students in Year 7 are now tested using LUCID and will be tested again in Year 9 to assess progress. This will also identify any remaining gaps. This data has enabled the SEND department to share with staff detailed information about students and where support needs to be offered resulting in a 4-tier support programme. (Level 1 – in class support, level 2 – 1:1 reading with the Sixth Form, level 3 – IDL spelling and reading intervention and level 4 1:1 reading with a Teaching Assistant). The data gained from LUCID has been shared with staff for the first time and Charlotte Barlow, SENDCo, has delivered staff training on what this data means and how it can be turned into useful learning and teaching strategies in the classroom.
Staff have also begun to effectively teach new vocabulary using DVI. While this is still in its initial stages, staff are including etymology, context and regular usage of words frequently in lessons, instead of simply giving key definitions. This will develop further over the coming months as we provide staff with more structured strategies to support their work in this area. This work has also focused on Intermediate Vocabulary, in particular that which allows students to access exam questions effectively. Heads of subject departments have been working on introducing this into their curriculums and have been allocated time to do this in Department Meetings and the 24th November Squish Day.
We have also invested in individual staff CPL to ensure that the very best practice in Literacy is being investigated in school. We have a staff member completing the NPQ in Leading Literacy and are part of the Disciplinary Literacy Project being run with other Surrey schools. Our SENDCo has also attended CPL in developing literacy levels. The Learning Partners Academy Trust, we have worked with educational consultant Michele Miller to discuss our current literacy position and to plan for the next steps of implementation. The School Library has also completed some fantastic work around transition reading, encouraging students moving into Year 7 to read across the summer break and support their transition into secondary school life. Further work now needs to be done to harness some of this enthusiasm.
Literacy is an integral part of what we do here at County. It is included within the QA processes, the Lesson Observation Form, and the County Learning Guarantee. In a recent Learning Walk by Learning Partners Academy Trust CEO, Jack Mayhew, the emerging work we have done around this was evident and commented on positively. House Reading is established in the calendar and is an annual event that we hope will continue to grow and QA work shows that Silent Reading is now embedded in our routines during tutorial time.
Disciplinary Literacy – Antonella Bosco-Reid, Senior Deputy Headteacher and Jo Cole, Assistant Headteacher