Over the last couple of years I’ve visited over 100 schools and practically none of them have got literacy right. Now obviously I only get asked to talk to schools who feel they can improve – maybe there are loads of schools out there who have got it right and they’re just keeping quiet, But I doubt it.
But if schools are struggling to implement literacy policies that actually have an impact on students it’s not for want of trying. We know that poor literacy blights life chances. We know being able to read, write and speak with confidence and accuracy opens doors otherwise barred and bolted. And we know that even though schools and teachers can do precious little, it’s a damn sight more than anyone else has the opportunity, inclination or ability to do. It’s increasingly widely accepted that everyone is responsible for improving students’ literacy but all too often teacher just aren’t sure how they might go about this. The day-to-day pressure of teaching means that teachers just don’t have time to reinvent wheels or waste valuable lessons on anything which seems gimmicky or irrelevant. Ultimately, they’re judged on how well they teach their subjects and anything else can seem a distracting luxury. Typically, schools will employ an incredibly hardworking, dedicated literacy coordinator who despite all their helpful suggestions, insights and resources they tend not to have the time or the clout to get anything done. So apart from keyword posters going up and a shared area being filled with resources no one will use, nothing gets done. Children continue to struggle.
The problems are endemic. Every school is concerned with the same issues: how do you get children reading; how can we make students better at writing; is there a way to make students more articulate?
The frustrating answer to all these questions is, yes, but it takes hard work. It requires teachers and school leaders to think differently about what their job is. Focussing on literacy objectives will not improve anything. Instead, what’s needed is for teachers to explicitly teach the language of their subject alongside their subject content. My slightly surprising insight is that if this is done well, the fact that children’s reading and writing improves is almost trivial. What really matters is that students get better at thinking.
How can I help? I can happily spend a day in your school explaining what I know about how to putting language at the heart of teaching and creating the conditions for disadvantaged students can access an academic curriculum. If students learn the language of academic success then they can be academically successful. But there are no magic beans. Although you’ll have a fantastic training session, it won’t make a lot of difference to what happens day in day out in classrooms.
Addressing teachers’ knowledge of how to explicitly teach their subject’s language will help, but what really makes a difference is sustained, focussed support. What I’ve found works particularly well is to work with a department other than the English department – a subject that’s not naturally considered a natural ally of literacy. Through working with DT, science or performing arts teams we’ve been able to show all teachers what the possibilities might be.
For an overview of basics of how to ‘do’ literacy well, read this post. If that whets your appetite, I’ve written a book on the subject. And if you’d like to discuss other ways I could help, email me or give me a call on 07966 355059.
It’s the ‘bolt on’ initiative that’s always the problem. I have recently persuaded my SLT colleagues to go down the genre based pedagogy route which I know is going to be a very long road.
Ultimately I am convinced it will take us where we want to go.
Very best of luck Mark – I agree: hard work but worth it
Is there an elephant in the room here?
OK, I’ ll ask the question: in general, are teachers sufficiently literate?
Your last but one paragraph seems to me to have a somewhat dismal sub-text, namely that teachers aren’t already aware of the language of their subject and its value for teaching and learning. How sad! How worrying!
I work in teacher training and, to be frank, it’s not only a problem of knowledge about the language of a subject domain (at times over hard to encourage) but also a problem of attitude towards the importance of language in all its forms along with very little sense that it is professionally important to self-improve one’s capacity for using language. (Very hard to encourage).
I generalise of course, and like the weather my perception is not universally true.
Is there a vicious circle at work? An increasing number of NQTs have been educated in a school culture where expectations of speaking, listening and writing have been steadily declining. No wonder then that too few NQTs have well-formed notions about the role of their own language in learning.
Sorry! I am not a Daily Mail reader and I *am* a left-of-centre proletarian but I am depressed by the increasingly poor use of language in our education system. Your post suggests that you too think it is true – teachers in general do not grasp the crucial place of language. So it’s not surprising that our kids don’t. They have too few examples to follow or to live up to.
You’re right to be concerned. One of the issues is that few teachers know the grammar of their own language never having been taught it at school. This ensures it doesn’t get passed on and, yes, the cycle seems vicious.
But this isn’t hopeless – grammar is relatively straightforward to learn and it seems a very reasonable to make grammatical knowledge a prerequisite for anyone wish to be a teacher. Ignorance is no one’s fault – schools and ITT need to make resources available to fill this deficit – but teachers ought to be accountable for making use of these resources and acting as professionals.
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Having seen my own two sons and my teacher friends sons- all of whom I taught in year6- shed the writing skills we gave them as they progressed through secondary school- I think this is a very real problem. The 4 children in question went to 4 different secondary schools – two of which are outstanding. What is interesting is that they can write well for English lessons- but come the humanities or science, they seem to regress 6 or 7 years. Really poor use of causal connectives, unfinished sentences, but mainly startlingly low expectations of themselves. As teachers we tell our sons to rewrite that garbled two sentence answer as a coherent paragraph.But the answer from each child ( and remember they all go,to different schools) is ‘ but me teacher doesn’t expect me to write any more/better). So they don’t- and lose the skills they once had. I think homework is partly to blame- given only because it’s policy and rarely marked. If it is marked what seems to be given credit is the factual answer to the question rather than the coherence or ambition of the piece itself. I wish my children had had teachers who taught like this https://whatslanguagedoinghere.wordpress.com/2013/11/10/red-scare-unit-lessons-1-to-3/
Your analysis applies equally to higher education – perhaps to all education. My focus group surveys of students in several UK universities suggests that they find essay and dissertation writing difficult not (as the myth goes) because they haven’t learned to write essays but because they haven’t grasped the epistemology of their subjects. https://westengland.academia.edu/JohnHodgson
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