Literacy in Professional Practice

Dr Chris Hanley

Dr Gee Macrory

The UK is the only economically developed country where 16 to 24-year-olds have the lowest literacy skills of any age group in society - in England, 14.9% of adults aged 16-65 lack functional literacy skills, equating to 5.1 million people (National Literacy Forum, 2014:2)

Making the case for literacy…

May affect a person’s ability to…Recognise spoken sounds and spell words correctlyRead and write fluentlyDevelop ideas and understanding in any given subjectParticipate in a democracy (Kingman Report, 1988)

Literacy difficulties…

Kingman Report

Kingman Report (1988:7) ‘People need expertise in language to be able to participate effectively in a democracy. There is no point in having access to information that you cannot understand, or having the opportunity to propose policies which you cannot formulate. People receive information and misinformation in varying proportions from, among others, family and friends, work mates, advertisers, journalists, priests, politicians and pressure groups. A democratic society needs people who have the linguistic abilities which will enable them to discuss, evaluate and make sense of what they are told, as well as to take effective action on the basis of their understanding. The working of a democracy depends on the discriminating use of language on the part of all its people. Otherwise there can be no genuine participation, but only the imposition of the ideas of those who are linguistically capable.’

Recent commentary

Ofsted (2013:6-8)‘the case for promoting literacy across the secondary curriculum is urgent and essential….. the evidence gathered during this survey shows that teachers in a secondary school need to understand that literacy is a key issue regardless of the subject taught. It is an important element of their effectiveness as a subject teacher’

teachers have to ‘demonstrate an understanding of and take responsibility for promoting high standards of literacy, articulacy and the correct use of standard English, whatever their specialist subject.’

- Teaching Standards

What are teachers’ responsibilities?

Inspecting schools

(School Inspection Handbook, 2011, updated 2014): aspects of literacy now built into each of the key judgements made in a school inspection….

Pp18-19 ‘there may be occasions when inspectors need to hear lower-attaining pupils read in Years 7 and 8 in secondary schools. This is to find out how effectively the school is teaching reading to its weakest readers and to assess whether the pupils are equipped with the phonic strategies needed to tackle unfamiliar words’.

Phonics is considered to be a key component in the teaching of early reading.

“‘Phonics’ is about the relationship between sound and print”

- Harrison (2004:41)

So what is ‘phonics’?

English has 44 sounds or phonemes, but only 26 letters.

(See ‘Phonology notes1’ for more on phonemic awareness)

So some combinations of letters have to represent more than one sound

…phonics

Lough Cough Thought Through Bough

How many different sounds?

In Geography we photograph jeopardised giraffes

In business we whiz around on buses

In mathematics we stick to quizzes

Different letters, same sounds?

It is crucial for readers to be able to break words down into their parts and recognise the meanings contained there.

What are the meanings?... Inter – (as in, interdisciplinary) Geo – Bi – Tri -

Recognizing parts of words

Post – - ed - ing - saurus - lithic - oid - ism

Recognising parts of words

As recommended by the ‘Rose Report (2006), schools now adhere to the ‘simple view of reading’. Phonics is to be taught in discrete sessions within a language rich-curriculum that also stresses comprehension.

The Rose report (2006)

Phonics often deals with difficulties associated with recognising and spelling particular words.

Pupils can struggle also struggle with literacy at sentence and whole text levels

What other kinds of literacy difficulty are there?

World knowledge Text type Text cohesion Sentence structure Word level Phoneme-grapheme

correspondences (phonics)

Levels of text

Block A: Trainees need to read ‘The Literacy Guide for Secondary Schools’ (2012-2013), and consider the advice on teaching reading pages 6 – end..

They could also see: http://dera.ioe.ac.uk/687/1/01109-2009PDF-EN_01.pdf , Support for Spelling doc – aimed at primary but could be very useful for secondary teachers

Primary Placement: Phonics observationBlock B: tutorial with PM or designate (eg

SENCO)

Government priority Tested at age 6 / KS 1 : https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/

phonics-screening-check-2015-materials

Tests decoding words and non words

Statutory

Phonics and schools

End of KS1 and KS2 tests

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/2016-key-stage-2-english-grammar-punctuation-and-spelling-sample-test-materials-mark-scheme-and-test-administration-instructions

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/2016-key-stage-1-english-reading-sample-test-materials-mark-scheme-and-test-administration-instructions

References

DfES (2006) Independent review of the teaching of early reading (Rose Review). London: HMSO

DES (1988) Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Teaching of English Language (Kingman Report). London: HMSO.

Harrison, C. (2004) Understanding Reading Development. London:

Sage Publications. National Literacy Forum (2014) Vision for Literacy 2025. Ofsted (2013) Improving English in Secondary Schools. London:

H.M.S.O. Ofsted (2014) School inspection handbook: Handbook for inspecting

schools in England under section 5 of the Education Act 2005 (as amended by the Education Act 2011). London: H.M.S.O.