Why Literacy is not just for English Teachers
All too often whole school approaches to literacy are bolt-ons or blanket strategies. These are implemented with the best of intentions, but lack the nuance needed to meet subject, phase or student needs. Often these are linked to an approach that expects the English department to teach literacy.
In my talk at ResearchEd, and here, I’m going to talk about why effective literacy isn’t just delivered by English teachers. And posing the question- how can we ‘do literacy’ better?
Effective literacy considers three domains; reading, writing and spoken language. These three domains have common sets of knowledge and skills, which overlap, interact and support one another (Breadmore et al., 2019). The three domains of literacy benefit from lots of instruction, lots of practice and lots offeedback.
It’s unlikely that the instruction, practice and feedback can be provided in English lessons, literacy lessons, or interventions alone. One solution to this, is to equip all of our teachers to contribute to pupils’ literacy development through consistently high quality literacy instruction.
