Literacy News (1: 22nd November 2012)

Thank you to Louise Marsh for providing us with the first of our literacy updates. I will also post these notes on the Learning Walks page.  In addition Louise has also found some helpful guidance on Ofsted entitled  Notes on the new Ofsted framework: how to be outstanding; just follow the link!  http://www.guardian.co.uk/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2012/nov/19/new-ofsted-framework-how-to-be-outstanding 

Thank you to the English and PHSE Departments who welcomed us for our first Literacy Learning Walks. We were lucky enough to spend time in KS4 and KS3 classrooms and noticed many areas of good practice in supporting our students’ literacy needs and development.

Displays and classroom environments:

• Wide range of displays of key words, sentence starters and essay structures
• High-quality, beautifully-presented student work, often side-by-side with professional work which highlighted our students’ strengths and similarities
• Key skills for the subject with the main features/key words highlighted

Active teaching of Literacy-related skills

• Strong focus on understanding exam-related vocabulary and words which were likely to feature in the upcoming exams (e.g. discussion and explanation of the words “deduce” and “infer”)
• Modelled answers which were used to unpick Skilled and Excellent criteria
• Dictionaries and thesauri which are easy-to-access

Assessment and feedback

• Marking codes on display in some classrooms
• Feedback which responded to written accuracy

If you would also like to display the Marking Codes in your classroom and/or stick copies in students’ books, please don’t forget that they can be found in Staff/Staff Resources/Literacy Resources/Marking and Assessment Support.

The Literacy Resources folder in the Staff/Staff Resources area also contains:

• Writing Skills folder containing Non-Fiction Writing Guides
• Reading Skills folder containing guidance about DARTs activities
• Copies of Literacy Mats and a range of subject-specific materials, grouped under subject area
• 2012 Literacy Guidance folder containing copies of INSET materials, overviews given to Departments and outlines of the year.