Download
1 / 79
790 likes | 813 Views
An Introduction to Literacy Development. What is literacy?. ‘the set of skills which allows an individual to engage fully in society and in learning, through the different forms of language, and the range of texts, which society values and finds useful.’
E N D
What is literacy? ‘the set of skills which allows an individual to engage fully in society and in learning, through the different forms of language, and the range of texts, which society values and finds useful.’ Literacy and English, Principles and Practice, Pg1, 2010
What is literacy? ‘Literacy is fundamental to all areas of learning, as it unlocks access to the wider curriculum. Being literate increases opportunities for the children in all aspects of life, lays the foundations for lifelong learning and work and contributes strongly to the development of all four capacities of Curriculum for Excellence.’ Literacy and English, Principles and Practice, Pg1, 2010
“We recognise without question that a strong, successful country requires strong and secure literacy skills. Literacy support unlocks learning in all other areas, is crucial for developing employability skills and is a prerequisite for full, informed and responsible participation in social, economic, cultural and political life. Without literacy skills, health and wellbeing can be seriously impaired, or even negated.” Sir Harry Burns
Literacy Strategy • Improve the curriculum to help children and young people develop literacy knowledge and skills required for learning, life and work. • Enhance learning and teaching. • Improve partnership working. • Provide effective interventions for children who require targeted support.
Curriculum • Introduce an early years tracking database • Review the skills framework taking cognisance of the benchmarks • Develop an Adult Literacies Action Plan
Interventions • Introduce an Early Years Pupil Equity Fund (2017/2018) • Invest in training teacher leaders of Reading Recovery • Review ERC Dyslexia guidance and practice
Learning and Teaching • Deliver a Career Long Professional Learning Programme • Develop online resources to support the teaching of literacy • Implement an Individual Learning Planning approach for Adult Learners
Rationale • Literacy is an essential prerequisite for: • communicating in different ways and in different settings • thinking critically and creatively • learning independently and as part of a group • making reasoned evaluations • linking and applying different kinds of learning • relating to others and managing themselves • working in partnership and in teams • solving problems CfE
What the research tells us • Literacy attainment is directly determined by; individual ability and motivation, teaching pedagogy and the class, school, family and community context (Ehri et al., 2001; Camilli, Vargas & Yurecko, 2003; Rose, 2006; Torgerson, Brooks & Hall, 2006). • A rich, holistic reading programme and a well developed literacy environment for pupils is important (Lyon, 1998), and this can be supported where teaching and learning strategies vary to suit the needs of pupils (Smith and Ellis, 2005).
The Glass Floor • Children from more advantaged social backgrounds who are assessed at age 5 as having low cognitive ability are nonetheless significantly more likely to become high earners than their high ability peers in lower income households. • Children from high income backgrounds who show signs of low academic ability at age 5 are 35% more likely to be high earners as adults than children from poorer families who show early signs of high ability. www.gov.uk
The Glass Floor Pillar One: • More advantaged parents securing educational opportunities to help their children overcome lack of ability and overtake their more gifted but poorer peers by: • investing time and resources • providing better careers advice and guidance • placing a high value on polish and ‘soft skills’, such as self-confidence, decisiveness, leadership and resilience • prioritising school choice, with more advantaged parents able to move house to be in the catchment area of a great state school, invest in private tuition or give their children a private education
The Glass Floor Pillar Two • More advantaged parents securing advantages for their children into the labour market that are unavailable to less well-off parents by: • helping their children into employment through informal social networks • securing informal and unpaid internships • investing in their children’s ‘soft skills’ which are highly valued in employment recruitment processes
“It’s a social scandal that all too often demography is still destiny in Britain. The government should make its core mission the levelling of the playing field so that every child in the country has an equal opportunity to go as far as their abilities can take them.” Alan Milburn Former Social Mobility Commission
The Human Brain • http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-40488545
Experience Shapes Brain Architecture by Over-Production Followed by Pruning Birth 6 Years 14 Years P.O. Svanberg Sept 2010
StanislasDehaene‘Reading in the Brain’ • We are able to learn to read because we inherit from evolution an efficient object recognition system with enough plasticity to learn new shapes, and with the relevant connections to link these shapes to existing language areas. • The acquisition of reading slowly specializes many neurons of this region to create an efficient hierarchical visual word form system • We all learn to read with a similar brain architecture. Cognitive neuroscience data are therefore relevant for the teaching of reading.’ • http://developingchild.harvard.edu/resources/three-core-concepts-in-early-development/
Brain Functions P.O. Svanberg Sept 2010
The brain and behaviour: anatomy of a hijack FIGHT OR FLIGHT, FREEZE, RESPONSE: Heart rate and blood pressure increase. Large muscles prepare for action
Effective Parental Support • Talk about the words around you (e.g. food names, labels, signs) • Play ‘I spy’ • Sing rhymes and songs together • Ask for help with the shopping list • Relate books to shared experiences • Demonstrate a passion for reading • Provide a rich and varied literacy environment • Ensure a range of reading formats are available and attractive • Regularly read a variety of novels to your child. • Ask a balance of open and closed questions about stories.
Effective Parental Support • Build upon your children's interests • Encourage choice and provide opportunities for your child to develop a sense of control (autonomy) over their reading. • Intervene when your child experiences difficulties. • Regularly interact about books, build upon your child’s ideas, and utilise games and humour to foster their reading engagement.
Literacy DevelopmentKey Factors Vocabulary development • In Britain, children aged 5 from the poorest 5th of society are approximately 11.1 months behind their counterparts from middle income households, and 16 months behind those from the most affluent backgrounds (Sutton Trust, 2010) https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-athletes-way/201402/tackling-the-vocabulary-gap-between-rich-and-poor-children Phonological Awareness • Broader awareness of sound, syllabification, patterns in sounds / rhyme / alliteration. Phonemic Awareness • smallest units of sound that you can hear in a word – isolation of sounds segmenting, blending, manipulating)
Literacy DevelopmentKey Factors • Concepts of print • Phonics • Fluency • Comprehension and meta-cognition • Engagement and Motivation • Literacy rich environment
Rhyming Activity • There was a young(ish?) man called Chris • Who thought he’d give Wednesday a miss • For in times gone before • He’d been heckled a ‘bore’ • By the staff who love taking the....
TES Article 5th January • Nursery rhymes teach children a range of speaking and listening skills: auditory discrimination concentration how to follow a story how to listen for a rhythm and a beat how to discriminate different sounds and to detect rhyming words.
TES Article 5th January • Children who develop good speaking and listening skills early on will become stronger readers and writers than those who don’t. • You can’t learn phonics if you can’t discriminate sounds by ear. • You can’t be a good writer without an extensive vocabulary so…
TES Article 5th January • They introduce literary devices: similes (the fleece that is “white as snow”) onomatopoeia (“pop goes the weasel”) alliteration (“sing a song of sixpence”) Poetry is all about sound
Phonological Awareness • Foundation on which phonics and spelling is built. • Ability to hear and produce individual sounds in words (phonemes) • Prerequisite skill for children to: • learn to associate sounds with letters • manipulate sounds to blend words during reading • segment words during spelling
Phonics • Phonics is the explicit teaching of the relationship between the letters (graphemes) of written language and the individual sounds (phonemes) of spoken language. • The aim of teaching phonics is to enable pupils to read and write independently. The teaching of phonics is distinct from the teaching of phonological awareness.
Phonic Approaches Synthetic Phonics: • breaking words down into their smallest units • teaching grapheme / phoneme correspondence • blending the sounds of these units to form words. Analytic Phonics: • breaking words down but not necessarily into the smallest units • teaching recognition of beginning and ending sounds • e.g. man, mat, map, can, pan, man. Multi-sensory techniques should be used.
AIMS • To revise recent data on attainment, specifically in reading. • To share knowledge of professional inquiry in a real-life context. • To use research evidence to enhance understanding of learning and teaching.
Recent evidence • Speech, language and communication was the area returning most concern in the early years. • Downwards trend in percentage of pupils achieving “the expected CfE level relevant for their stage”. • Massive disparity between percentages of children achieving level three and children achieving level four by S3. • SSLN data shows ‘majority of pupils doing well,’ but they are not doing as well as they did in 2012.
PLANNING • Problem clearly identified, but this need not be the starting point of all inquiry processes. • The problem/puzzle gives way to a question – this should be as general as possible in order to allow for the data to be as true a reflection. • “What happens when…” • “What happens when reciprocal teaching is used?”
USING RESEARCH • Fundamentally important. • Difficult to access. • Partnerships with Universities play a pivotal role in accessing up-to-date research – commercially available resources are limited in their scope.
