GB-READING-MASTERCLASS. Writing like a historian: developing students' writing skills | Teacher Network | Guardian Professional. "Why are we doing English in history, sir? " came the question as I asked my year 9 history class what kind of word disarmament was. Having anticipated this kind of reaction I had an answer prepared: "Do we only use language in English lessons? " The question was anticipated because I have heard it from other classes, and indeed other teachers, since I began to include an explicit focus on language development in my history lessons 18 months ago.
And the question goes to the heart of what I believe is a fundamental reason for the attainment gap between children eligible for free school meals and their non-free school meal counterparts in Britain; the misalignment of these pupils' language use with that which is needed for academic success and the need for teachers to explicitly address this misalignment in their teaching. My year 9 class are typical of many classes I've taught over the nine years of my teaching career; enthusiastic, bright, of limitless academic potential. Developing Literacy Through Maths. Sam Down – @SDown4 - is a Progress Leader in our hugely successful maths department. Recently he has been looking at strategies that maths teachers can use to enhance maths learning, whilst also developing literacy skills.
The following article is a summary of some of the strategies he has been trying out in his classroom and sharing with the department. If you are a maths teacher, who has been looking at similar developmental work, please feel free to contact Sam via twitter, or leave a comment on this post. Developing Literacy in the teaching and learning of Mathematics – Sam Down, Durrington High School In line with the new National Curriculum (2013) which states “Teachers should develop pupils’ spoken language, reading and writing as integral aspects of the teaching of every subject”, we are currently focusing on the different ways we can embed literacy into the teaching and learning of Mathematics at Durrington High School. Our focus has been divided into three main areas, these are;
Spelling punctuation and grammar (SPaG) placemat. Shared Writing: Modelling Mastery | huntingenglish. If the path of repeated deliberate practice makes something like perfect, then imitating good models of writing provides solid foundations for the pursuit of writing excellence. ‘Shared writing‘ is one specific strategy that models writing in a highly effective way and is one of my favourite and most effective teaching strategies. ‘Shared writing’ begins with the sharing of the key information or language related to the written task, before the teacher then leads the students in co-constructing the writing, scribing the writing with targeted questioning and feedback. In my experience there are few better ways to illuminate each step of the complex writing process for students and it can work across the curriculum.
In many of my blog posts I keep returning back to a quotation from the brilliant Ron Berger about excellence: “I believe that work of excellence is transformational. (page 8, ‘An Ethic of Excellence’ by Ron Berger) Shared Writing: The Top Ten Tips 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Developing oracy: it’s talkin’ time! Talk is the sea upon which all else floats~ James Britton, Language and Learning, 1970 Students spend a lot of talking, don’t they? Everyone can speak, so why would we want to waste valuable time teaching them to do it? Well, while all this is undoubtedly true, many students don’t speak well. This is, I hasten to add, not the same as being well spoken. As teachers we’re pretty leary of the idea of talking in lessons. Teacher talk has got itself a very bad name. The concept of ‘oracy’ has been with us since 1965, when researcher Andrew Wilkinson coined it in an attempt to escape the woolliness of ‘speaking and listening’ and give parity with the more respected terms ‘literacy’ and ‘numeracy’.
Head teacher and literacy guru, Geoff Barton has been urging us to get away from the idea of teaching literacy and instead literacy as an integral component of teaching and learning. In a presentation to the DfE Alexander said: This is, of course, not without problems. So, what to do? Related posts. Blog 1: Theory | What's language doing here? I’ve begun to follow some really interesting new people on twitter this week and read several top quality blogs (and duly #ff’ed for the first time in ages because of them).
Added to great people I already follow, this has meant for a week of genuinely informative and challenging conversations about the purpose of education, what we should be teaching, how and why. These conversations have prompted me to dip my toe into the blogging pool, so as to escape the limitations of 140 characters. I hope what I come up with is both of interest and adds to the debates that seem to swirl around all of us in education just now. I will be blogging about the approach to teaching and learning I have been implementing, developing, tweaking and advocating for the last 18 months at my secondary school in Birmingham, where I am assistant principal with responsibility for teaching and learning. The school I have the privilege of working at has 95% EAL pupils.
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