Bishop Challoner

Catholic Collegiate School

POLICY : LITERACY

‘Students should be taught in all subjects to express themselves correctly and

appropriately and to read accurately and with understanding.’

All teachers are teachers of literacy. As such, the staff of BCCCS are committed to
developing literacy skills in all of our students, in the belief that it will support their
learning and raise standards across the curriculum, because:

• Everyone needs vocabulary, expression and organisational control to cope

with the cognitive demands of subjects.
• Reading helps us to learn from sources beyond our immediate experience.
• Writing helps us to sustain and order thought.
• Language helps us to reflect, revise and evaluate the things we do, and on the
things others have said, written or done.
• The language needed to respond to higher order questions encourages the
development of thinking skills and enquiry.
• Improving literacy and learning can have an impact on our self-esteem,
motivation and behaviour.
• Literacy allows us to learn independently: it is empowering.

Note:
This policy should e read in conjunction with the Policy for E2L Students.

• Lead and give a high profile to literacy in their teaching.

• Support and monitor the teaching of literacy across the schools in their line
management of faculties.

• Provide students with knowledge, skills and understanding they need to read,
write and speak and listen effectively.
• Contribute to students’ development of language, since speaking, listening,
writing and reading are, to varying degrees, integral to all lessons.
• Encourage their children to use the range of strategies they have learnt to
improve their levels of literacy.

• Take increasing responsibility for recognising their own literacy needs and
making improvements.

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 • Oversee and monitor literacy in a whole-school context.

• Language is the prime medium through which students learn and express
themselves across the curriculum, and all teachers have a stake in effective
literacy.
• All schemes of work and most, although not all lessons, should develop
literacy through the use of subject-specific and general vocabulary
• In all subjects across the curriculum, students should be given opportunities to
express themselves through language in the media of the written and spoken
word.
• In all subjects across the curriculum, students should be encouraged to speak
and write with good grammar, to develop their vocabulary, and to write with
correct spelling.
• Key vocabulary should be taught in introductions to lessons, employed in the
main body of lessons, and tested/recapped in plenaries at the end of lessons.

• We seek to teach students to use language precisely and coherently. They

should be able to listen to others, and to respond and build on their ideas and
views constructively.
• We seek to develop strategies to teach students how to participate orally in
groups and in the whole class. These strategies include: using talking to
develop and clarify ideas, identifying the main points to arise from a
discussion, listening for a specific purpose, and discussion and evaluation.

• We aim to give students a level of literacy that will enable them to cope with
the increasing demands of subjects in terms of specific skills, knowledge and
understanding. This applies particularly in the area of reading (including from
the screen), as texts become more demanding.
• We aim to teach students strategies to help them to: read with greater
understanding, locate and use information, follow a process or argument,
summarise, synthesise and adapt what they learn from their reading.
• We seek to build on and share existing good practice.

It is important that we provide for co-ordination across subjects to recognise and

reinforce students’ language skills, through:

• Making connections between students’ reading and writing, so that students

have clear models for their writing.
• Using the modelling process to make explicit to students how to write.

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 • Being clear about audience and purpose.
• Providing opportunities for a range of writing including sustained writing.
In the use of language across the curriculum, faculties and subjects should seek to
give students opportunities to use language to:

• inform
• recount
• explain
• instruct
• persuade
• discuss
• analyse
• evaluate
• write in structured ways (e.g. formal essays)

In use of language across the curriculum, faculties and subjects should seek to give
students opportunities to use subject-specific vocabulary.

For subject-specific vocabulary, students should be taught:

• How to say the words.

• How to spell the words.
• What the words mean.
Each department will:

• Identify and display key vocabulary.

• Revise key vocabulary.
• Teach agreed learning strategies that will help students to learn subject
spelling lists.
• Concentrate on the marking of high-frequency and key subject words taking
into account the differing abilities of students.
• Test or revise high frequency words regularly, setting personal spelling targets
as appropriate.

Some students need additional support owing to learning and other difficulties, while
other students need to be challenged and extended.

Strategies to be used include:

• Questioning (open/closed)
• Use of different thinking skills in teaching and learning
• Adjusting the demands of the task
• Use of additional support (e.g. TAs)
• Use of group structures within classes
• Streams and sets

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 • Resources
• Making objectives clear
• Creating an atmosphere where students evaluate their own and others’ work
• Setting appropriate targets
• The Reading Partners initiative
We seek to:

• Identify able students

• Support and extend their learning
• Train and empower teachers to achieve the above

For more information, see the Gifted & Talented Policy.

We seek to teach our students with special educational needs appropriately, supporting
their learning and providing them with challenges matched to their needs, through
using a range of teaching strategies such as guided group work, writing frames and
oral activities. Additional support is provided in a variety of ways, including TAs and
the LSU.

For more information, consult the SEN Department.

Our students learning English as an additional language need to hear good examples
of spoken English and also to refer to their first language skills to aid new learning in
all subjects of the curriculum. The use of their first language enables them to draw on
existing subject knowledge and to develop English language skills in context. For
example, a group of students can learn about paragraph organisation in their mother
tongue.

For more information, consult the MFL Department/see the Policy for E2L Students.

• Available data should be used in planning and assessing, including SATS (KS2
and KS3 as appropriate) and CATS.
• Assessment should also be undertaken with reference to other known
information about the statements (e.g. SEN, G&T, EAL).
• Assessment should lead to the setting of appropriate targets to enable students
to progress to the next level of learning and achievement.

For more information, consult the Assessment Policy.

We use a range of strategies and data to monitor and evaluate literacy across the
school. These do/can include:

• Sampling work – both students’ work and departmental schemes.

• Lesson observations.

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• Discussions in meetings.
• Student interviews.
• Scrutiny of development plans.
• Encouraging departments to share good practice by exhibiting or exemplifying
students’ work.
• Teachers are encouraged consult English and MFL Staff regarding literacy.
• Teachers are encouraged to consult HOFs and HODs regarding subject
specific literacy and its delivery.
• The ‘Literacy Across the Curriculum’ folder contains useful strategies such as
the management of group talk and listening.
• Modules five and six in the folder ‘Literacy Across the Curriculum’ provide
examples of strategies that can be used to help students cope with the
increasing demands of subjects.

Literacy - National Literacy Trust www.literacytrust.org.uk

The Standards Site: Literacy www.standards.dfes

National Institute for Literacy (NIFL) www.nifl.gov

LITERACY.org ....research and innovation for a more literate world.

www.literacyonline.org

Literacy Matters - Literacy Training and Resources www.literacymatters.com

National Center For Family Literacy Home Page www.famlit.org

Literacy Center Education Network www.literacycenter.net/lessonview

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