Inspecting School Libraries

So there seems to have been another mini pump into the cog of of inspections for school libraries. At the ATL conference they backed the call for support of school libraries (a great thing) by also a call for libraries to be part of the inspection process (a very bad thing).

I’ve spoken about my views before on the inspection of a school library and how support of this will do very little to encourage the use of school libraries. Schools are free to use their money how they wish and with all the government reforms in recent years giving schools more power to do as they want (just look at academisation and the free school movement) they are not going to dictate to schools that they must have a school library. This a completely against everything that they have been doing for the past 6 years. If they cannot dictate a scheme for levelling students to schools then there is no way they are going to make them all have a library. So not only is it a waste of time arguing this point it also masks a number of other issues.

1. Surely it is the job of school librarians themselves to show the quality of what they do and how much value they add to a school. If all school librarians were doing this then the argument would be a lot stronger. By blaming others, school leaders, ofsted etc they are taking away their own part to play in the demise of school libraries.

2. The issue I have the biggest problem with. Who is going to decide what criteria we use to judge school libraries?? I have absolutely no trust in the organisations who claim to support and be the voice of school librarians to come up with the right kind of criteria (let’s be honest what job have they done the last 20+ years to show they understand school libraries – yes I’m talking about CILIP!!!!). So what we could end up with is either a set of criteria created by group so out of touch with school libraries and schools in general that only reflects their own views of what makes a good library or ofsted on their own who create a curriculum driven set of criteria, again with no real understanding of what a library can actually achieve and is more akin to the English department with no understanding of the pastoral, information literacy etc etc part of a library.

I would fear for any future of school libraries that is part of an ofsted inspection especially one whose criteria is created by people who have such a weird, twisted view of what a schoo library is.

ATL, in my opinion have been spun some sort of line, which they don’t understand themselves and have blindly supported something that not only is extremely unlikely to happen but if it were to happen would have such a detrimental impact on school libraries that might mean the end of school libraries as we know them.

In my opinion we would be much much better supporting school libraries by showing school leaders the positive impact that school librarians and libraries have. By campaigning to make sure that every school understands what impact a good school librarian can have and also looking at the actual training librarians have and making sure that there is an element of school librarianship within it that doesn’t try and fit a public Iibrary model into a school one.

We really could make a difference if the people trying to campaign had an understanding themselves of what was actually going to work and what would make school libraries in schools work.

Gaining recognition for school libraries

As many readers will know I was recently nominated for the CILIP Information Literacy Award as part of this year’s LILAC conference.

It was a great honour to be asked to submit something let alone make it into the shortlist. The inclusion of school librarians has been extremely sparse over the years (to the point where I was only the third in the award’s history) and I think this is for a number of reasons.

When looking at the other projects and nominations it’s hard to see how I even managed to make the shortlist. The librarians making up the rest of the list are working in big institutions, doing amazing things and reaching so many people. Yet when I think this I also think about the importance of information literacy in schools and its teaching to our young people.

All the shortlisted librarians are indeed doing great things and making such a difference but as school librarians we must remember that the work we can achieve in our schools can go a long long way to helping others in their roles. In fact maybe they are able to make such a difference because of he poor nature of information literacy instruction in schools?

We have the potential to give young people the head start, the framework, the scaffolding on which they can build on over time and through the rest of their lives. Our ability to arm them with the skills is invaluable and should be seen as such.

It was a shame that the nomination didn’t cause more interest from other school librarians, willing to support ‘one of their own’ and use it as an example to show their schools what is possible and why it is important that in their schools they are given the opportunity to show their worth.

A colleague, not that long ago, said to me that he felt in school librarianship ‘there is an unsavoury, condescending clique, perpetuated by certain people and it leaves a bitter taste.’ What he was referring to, I think, was that there are a group of school librarians who like to sing each other’s praises and talk about raising the profile of school librarianship saying we should take all opportunities that arise to talk about what we do. However this only relates to things they do or have achieved and no one else outside of this. I think he felt annoyed that in fact this whole statement has a feel of passive aggressiveness to it by trying to state how they are ‘in it for school librarianship’ whereas in fact they are just in it for themselves and talk double standards when their actions speak more than their words.

Now, I don’t always agree with everything my colleague says however he is not the first person to say they feel like this. So whether these people’s perceptions are indeed correct it doesn’t really matter as the point is there are people that feel like this. They feel that those school librarians that seem to get ‘coverage’ or are the loudest aren’t giving the right representation of the profession, that they are part of a clique that isn’t welcoming to ‘newbies’ or those that don’t ‘fit’ the mould (whatever that might be).

If we truly want to raise the profile, to show the benefit of what we do then we seriously need to think about how we represent ourselves and how we are perceived within our own profession. For if there are those that in the profession that feel this way towards the clique then what do people outside the profession think? School librarians don’t get the plaudits that are deserved and the recognition of the importance of their role but how much is this down to those school librarians in the ‘limelight?’

A question I think we all need to consider.

When is reading for pleasure not reading for pleasure?

This is an interesting question and one that requires a little background.

Over the recent weeks I’ve read some rather disturbing articles about reading for pleasure and how to judge the success of reading for pleasure in a school. As many will know I have revolutionised the idea of showing impact in school libraries and especially the impact of reading, so although it is a self-recommendation that I am a specialist in this area, it comes from a strong proven track record endorsed by Ofsted and many authorities.

Reading for pleasure is a catch all phrase and very much a buzz word at the moment yet some people in the school library world seem to be making it a very murky one indeed. Reading for pleasure should be as easy as it sounds. It is the practice of reading for pleasure, for enjoyment, for satisfaction. To read for pleasure there must be only one ulterior motive. To enjoy.

So, how comes when we talk about young people reading for pleasure does it now become acceptable to not allow this to happen. How have we managed to get so caught up in the idea of impact and evidence that we have dirtied what reading for pleasure is. When I created my highly successful tracking programme the whole idea was to break down any barrier that a child had that stopped them from accessing books. Tracking allowed me to work out this problem and intervention gave me the solution. Further tracking of this success then allowed me the impact. This further tracking looked at attitudes and soft data and cross referenced this to hard data thus giving me my impact. The goal is to create a reader. A reader of pleasure.

Others, it seems, have tried to jump on this bandwagon, trying to show and create their own watered down , misinterpreted version of this and taken the only thing that is holy and sacred and scarred it. They have attempted to show impact by trying to track the goal and not the journey taken. They have made reading for pleasure take on the burden of extra motives. No longer is it to simply enjoy but it is now to create book reports, to answer quizzes, to create fancy trailers etc etc. Reading for pleasure, when it is done like this is impure and sullied and it is through a complete lack of understanding of the delicate nature of what reading for pleasure actually is that it occurs.

The attempt to prove reading for pleasure by undertaking tasks shatters the visible foundations and transforms it into something else. As a profession we need to be more protective of reading for pleasure. We see the daily onslaught that it faces from so many external factors that it is our job to hold this delicate thing precious and to not do anything to dissipate the wisp of smoke that it is. By all means encourage young people to show their enjoyment of books and what they have read in as many ways as you want, but do not make it part of the process. Do not make it an expectation. Do not destroy what it takes so long to create in a careless manner. The ones most likely to want to tell you in these varied ways as possible are the good readers, the successful ones. But these are not the ones we should concern the majority of our time with. It is the weaker, the hard to engage, the ‘refusers’ that we need to lead towards the discovery of reading for pleasure. They are the ones that already have negative views around reading. The ones that have only ever seen reading as a forced activity and here you have further exasperating this by forcing them to read a book that they are then going to have to create, write, talk about after the fact.

Please, for the sake of young people, have a little more respect .

 

A Letter to Headteachers

Dear Headteacher,

I’m writing to you in the hope that you are a reasonable person who has become a headteacher with the view to providing young people with the best education they can possibly receive. I write in the hope that you are also, in your leadership, geared towards the continued progress of all young people in your care as I hope to offer you a deal that will not only help you to achieve this but to give you, your school and students so much more.

As you know the education landscape in the past few years has seen some of its biggest changes since the Education Act of 1944 especially in such a short period of time. We have seen the introduction of ‘free schools,’ academies (select and forced) the scrapping of the EMA and introduction of Pupil Premium funding, the eradication of levelling (for God knows what) a new SEND  framework, a curriculum change of all key stages as well as a restructure of the GCSE grading system. We have also seen the government and Ofsted place greater focus on certain areas such as literacy, numeracy and independent learning.

As you will know many schools have faced downgrading from previous ‘Good’ or ‘Outstanding’ positions with the goalposts having been shuffled to make the higher recognition harder. You will also have noticed that many schools that are in the Requires Improvement category to have on their front pages statements that read ‘This school is not yet good because; students do not read widely enough’ or variations on the type.

I’m sure you also know that one of the key questions asked in school inspections nowadays is around how a school teaches its weakest readers. I do not need to tell you one of their success criteria is actually listening to young people read. There have also been numerous publications, that I know you are familiar with, that talk about the importance of literacy and especially reading in schools, reports such as Moving English Forward (2012), Getting Them Reading Early (2014), Reading Writing and Communication (2011) to name but a few.

So I know that you understand the importance of reading and literacy, know that you realise how much of an issue it is for everyone that we get it right. So my offer to you, my promise; is one of help and hope. I offer to you a solution, a way to make things work in your school, a way to succeed in literacy, reading and so much more.

This solution is a simple one and you may already have part of it in your school – all the better if you do. The solution is a library. Now stay with me, don’t stop reading just because you think I’m wrong, I know you’re sensible and pray you’ll bear with me.

To start off with you may not be familiar with the idea of a library in your school. You may know it by another name, a Learning Resource Centre or some other spurious title, however I can promise you that under it all these are all still libraries. You may have had a bad experience in another school of a library or you may believe the stereotype of a library (yet baulk at the stereotypes others have of teachers). But, I can promise you, if you support it, believe in it and work with it a library can be your solution, your saviour.

A library in your school can offer you a way to engage your students into reading, reading for pleasure importantly. It can be the place where learning is centred and can provide a way to work with your weakest students. It has the potential to work with your SEND department and offer specialist reading help for your weakest readers.

When it comes to learning a library can also work with all your teachers to improve the quality of teaching and learning in your school by offering support in resources and knowledge. It can guide your students to become independent learners in arming them with the skills to find and assimilate information into knowledge. The educational benefits of a library are massive but if you needed even more reasons to have one think about the types of students that use this place as a safe haven, the Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural aspects that are so difficult to put into curriculum time are fulfilled through a school library and we haven’t even started to think about the parental engagement or transition work that can easily be undertaken by a library that lives in non-contact time.

But for this to work, for your library to improve all these aspects of your school it requires just one thing from you. Support. The support to make it work, to open the doors and allow the library to fulfil its potential in your school. It needs this small thing to make a big difference, but I promise if you do it your school and importantly your students will feel the benefit in so many ways.

So I hope that you are a sensible person looking at ways to improve outcomes for all your students and teachers and hope that you take this offer with arms wide open.

Your sincerely

Adam Lancaster

A Joint Responsibility – School Libraries

School Libraries, when they are successful are vital to a school. Yet so many schools across the country do not have a library or have a library and do not use it/support it successfully. There are many debates on who should manage a school library from professional to non-professional but this debate is not for this article (however in a previous post I have spoken about this here).

As much as I feel that there is a problem with the management of schools not recognising the importance of a school library I think there also needs to be a certain amount of joint responsibility about the success or lack of a school library.

It’s very easy to blame the establishment and leadership teams for not supporting the library and arguing towards making school libraries statutory in schools or stop schools from achieving ‘outstanding’ if they fail to have a library in place, however this can only ever be a long term goal, if it is even achievable and not a short term one. This is especially the case when we see in Ofsted’s latest report Better Inspection for All, 2015 that they won’t even extend this compliment to a music department in a school!

In between this happening (or not as the case will most likely be) what are we to do? Not try because ‘it doesn’t matter anyway we’re not statutory!’ Or do we actually realise that the success of a school library is about a joint responsibility that even though it may feel like we are not getting anywhere we need to keep doing all we can to make sure we keep up out end of the bargain.

If we as school librarians are not part of the solution then we are part of the problem. We need to be doing all we can to show the worth that we have in schools. To show our school leaders that there is a point to a school library, that we have a worth and what that worth actually is. However for this to happen we actually need to achieve something in our schools and to do this we need to be clear on what a school library actually is. How can we expect others, outside of the profession, to understand what we do if we are not clear and vocal on this enough? How can we expect to see a library and a librarian in every school when we don’t even call ourselves by these titles or name the place we work in as so. For schools that have been forced to change their names I would suggest that this is the result of our profession not being clearly defined on who we are and what we do and for those that choose to change their titles themselves I would ask why and suggest that it is decisions like this that further undermines our cause.

What we need to do as a profession of school librarians is decide upon who we are and what our roles and benefits are in schools and not just tell people this but show them. Ok so every school is different and roles will change slightly depending on locality, type of school etc but we can still formulate a vision of our key values and define our stance within schools. This surely has to be the way forward, to be clear on who we are and what we do and to communicate this clearly to all.

And then, only then can we start to expect the school to do their bit to. To keep up the other side of the bargain. When we show what we are capable of and instil that trust in us then we can make the expectations on our schools to do their bit on this joint responsibility.

Once they know our worth and see how clear our message is it is then down to the schools to back us, to give us the opportunity to show what can be achieved with a school library and a school librarian. But their expectations of us will be high. We have put ourselves on pedestals so as a profession we also need to have a joint responsibility to keep up our end of the solution. For if we can’t do this, if not all of us believe in this, stand by this, then we cannot hope to change people’s opinions of us.

As much as the success of school libraries is a joint responsibility across the school it is also one across our profession that we all need to buy into.

“If we build it, they will come.”

 

War on illiteracy?

Nicky Morgan claims that she wants to wage a war on illiteracy yet her words do not seem to echo her, or the government’s attitude with truly aiming to reduce the gap between those children that can and those that can’t.

In her statement she claims that by the end of primary school children should be able to ‘read a novel’ and ‘ be able to write a short story with accurate punctuation, spelling and grammar.’ An admirable thing to want to achieve and with an explanation of achievement being through an improvement on teaching in the classroom you’d find few that would disagree. However the thing that seems to be missing from all this is the role of enjoyment in reading.

If we persist with reading in such a taught vein then we are only ever going to continue to damage our weaker readers. Yes teaching reading is vitally important but a love of reading and wanting to read is just as, if not more important. In my previous posts about the how we read (here, here, here , here) you can see that one of the routes of successful reading lies around the conscious decision to want to read. This comes from taking reading outside of a learning environment, showing that reading is much much more than just the ability to decode.

If Nicky Morgan wants children to be able to read a novel she needs to also focus on how we can encourage them to want to read. With there being such a press on teachers’ time but also a need for reading to be promoted outside of the curriculum then who is going to do this? Surely the answer is a school library and a school librarian? Someone whose whole job is around promoting a love of reading. Someone who dedicates their time to do just what is needed.

So if this is the case then why does the government insist on cutting funding for libraries? Why do schools fail to recognise the benefit, or even essential nature of a library and a librarian?

If we want to really allow children to leave primary school with these basic skills we need to recognise the role a dedicated reading specialist plays in achieving this and make sure that these are a primary part of the learning and loving stages of reading. A failure to recognise this and do this is only at the cost of our children and their right to a love of reading.

Escape the filter bubble – consult a librarian

 

Mentioned in my post last week, here, I spoke about the information filter bubble that exist on the internet today and through social media sites.

The importance in knowing this exists, especially if you work in an education setting, is massive. The internet is fantastic, a great invention and the potential it gives for learning and teaching is massive, however both these things, learning and teaching, are not reliant upon the internet. They do not need it to be successful and they should not rely on it. In the UK there is nothing that the curriculum requires of the internet however the internet can provide a lot to enhance aspects of learning and of collaboration.

But, and this is the Kim Kardashian of buts, how many know about the information filter bubble we are being forced into? How many teachers know that the Google factor is not what they have been led to believe it is? How many students take for granted that on any search they are seeing only the information that an algorithm wants them to see? And more importantly how many people have the skills and abilities to make sure they think around this and gather news and information from a range of sources to step outside the filter bubble?

We need to have a healthy diet of all types of information. We need to see things that make us uncomfortable in the news as well as things that confirm our beliefs. We need information desserts as much as information vegetables, however we need someone to enable us and to guide us to make sure we don’t end up with just information junk food.

Seeking information from a range of sources is how a student can get a fully formed understanding of a subject and therefore can begin to turn this into knowledge. However with an over insistence on Google our young people are being led to information that only goes about confirming their own biases, almost a never ending self fulfilling information retrieval prophecy.

In my last post I spoke about the librarian in school being the person with the ability to do this role and to help guide youngsters outside of the information bubble. Maybe I spoke imprecisely about the librarian being a filter themselves. Yes my main attack is on the filtering job that the internet does that places us in this information bubble but when I speak of a librarian as a filter I mean them to be the person who filters out the non needed informtation, the irrelevant stuff, but leaves a bigger picture of the subject being searched for. The Information dessert and vegetable of the required subject.

What schools need to do is think about how their students access information. They need to embed in their teaching policies, the accessibility polices and their SMSC policies the right for students to have access to a range of sources from all different viewpoints. If they do not do this and continue to leave information searching and retrieval to chance then we will be at risk of growing our young to be shut off from the ‘bigger picture’ and only believing in the picture that is being created for them.

Information literacy may not be the most interesting of subjects and at the top of most schools’ agendas yet it is in my respect one of the most important issues of our generation. How can we make sure schools do all they can to allow young people to be able to step out of their isolated information filter bubble?

The first step in my mind has to be the empowerment and trust in the school librarian as a curriculum leader to pursue in schools a balanced and thoughtfully analysed approach to information retrieval. For them to teach and further empower the classroom teacher tying their teaching and the children’s learning into thoughtful information retrieval, importantly not as a an add-on but as a fundamental part of learning. If this can be achieved in schools then we can give our students the opportunity they deserve to become fully rounded individuals instead of only believing in the information they have been forced to see as the truth.

By this can only happen if we position in schools someone who has this knowledge, ability and responsibility.

Someone like a librarian maybe?

Rethinking information in the school library

So we’ve always been a bit different in our school library. Not different for the sake of being different but different in responding to our students needs and remembering that when it comes to information, reading and libraries there is nothing that is set in stone. No methodology, no process or way of doing things that cannot be changed or adapted to match and meet the needs of our users.

It is with this knowledge and understanding that we have gone through a process of rethinking how students access information and what we can do to make this as easy and successful as possible.

In doing this we needed to think about those things that are providing barriers to the students accessing information successfully and willingly. In knowing that there is nothing set in stone is quite refreshing as it means that everything is up for grabs. This means that we have a blank canvas where we can put the students needs first instead of trying to force them to conform to an outdated model.

This is not only in terms of how they can go about finding information but also about how they can access information too. We thought long and hard about all these things and spent a lot of time talking to students and teachers and watching how students find, pick and view information. An idea that everyone working in school libraries should spend time doing anyway.

From this refreshing viewpoint we started to work out what it was we wanted to achieve and what we wanted to achieve was a couple of different things. The first was a way of organising our stock to make it not only as simple as possible but also organised in such a way that students want to use this type of information instead of going straight to the internet. This was one of the biggest issues and one that from talking to the students you can understand. The internet is seen as an easy alternative, even if we know it isn’t, students perceive it to be. So the question becomes ‘how can we make accessing information in books as simple as possible?’

Now, this is where I may lose some people and don’t get me wrong I do really like Dewey. However I honestly feel that if we stick to certain systems ‘just because’ then we can’t go about actually making anything better. If you want some more of my opinions on Dewey then please see this past blog post. It is also interesting that a lot of the librarians I’ve had comments back from are more than willing to change their fiction collection and ordering system and stickering process to the extreme to ‘make it easier’ for students to access yet won’t even consider doing this in the non-fiction collection. It seems that there is almost a ‘precious’ nature around Dewey and that it ‘belongs’ to libraries and librarians so shouldn’t even be changed?

I won’t go into any more detail about Dewey except to say that we shouldn’t let anything limit our students from being able to access information successfully and willingly.

From our conversations with students and our observations of students we felt that the way stock was organised in the library was by no means conducive to students wanting to and being able to find information quickly and successfully. This became more than just signage it was about the fundamentals to how a library was organised.

At the time we were in a very lucky position where small amounts of money was being made available to improve the library facilities (as well as bidding for lots of different pots). Being a comprehensive state school this didn’t mean a bucket full of money or a complete rebuild. What it did mean though was that we had an opportunity, if we were clever, to be able to doing special to improve how students access and use information in the library.

As mentioned above this was going to include a new way to organise the books in our library and to allow access to information in very different ways. Many people have already heard me talk about our new model and I have been lucky enough to run numerous training course across the country and Europe on information searching and gathering in education sharing this, however I will recover it here for anyone that doesn’t know.

In schools a students life is split up into numerous sections in a very specific way. This is down to what year group they are in, which term it is and what subject they are currently studying. We therefore already had a model of information that students are not only used to but how they actually think. It therefore seems silly not to take advantage of this when we are trying to organise the information we have.

This began our thinking in trying to utilise this. We started to think what this might look like in terms of sorting our books and the result was to simply split stock up relating to the year group it was studied in, the term and importantly the subject that was covering it. It was one of those moments that you think to yourself ‘why haven’t we done this before, it’s just so obvious!’ To achieve this we needed to know specifically what was being studied across the curriculum and when, not necessarily a easy feat to achieve but one made easier by the fact that we were also going through a whole information literacy revolution in school where we were changing the idea of homework and moving it towards research and preparation for learning and encouraging more learning outside of the classroom . This is also set through our information literacy model OPUS (found here). Through this departments created subject overviews which were perfect to be able to make available to parents but also were to be used to allow us to know how to organise the stock.

We specifically purchased the right types of shelving (from Peters suppliers in Birmingham their ‘4-Square’ unit) which allowed us to create 4 shelves on each side. On this we were able to put the subject overview and signage at the top and then create a shelf for each of the KS3 year groups. We decided to stick for KS3 as there was a lot more rigidity in the KS3 curriculum to make this process easier. From just this small change and restructure the amount of non-fiction books that have been issued to students has dramatically increased. Books that were never touched have suddenly become extremely useful because students can easily access them and the information, almost quicker than logging on to the computers! Due to the fact that we do prep students are being conditioned to think ahead in their learning so we have also noticed that books are going out ahead of time as students read up on what they are going to be learning in preparation.

Alongside changing the way students access physical books we also wanted to look into how they go about accessing other types of material and information. We wanted to provide them with the opportunity to access e-material and online resources in as easier a way as possible. To allow this to happen we introduced a number of devices around the library. These had access solely to our library catalogue, to our ebook lending facility as well as devices where they could access a range of apps and the internet.

These have proved successful for a number of different reasons. The ones that we have allowed access to the internet and apps have further promoted our desire for students to use more info lit skills. With an e-device students cannot copy and paste information. It requires them to read, make notes and so their learning is much deeper because of this. As the devices are a lot quicker to load than the computers students are choosing to use these over the computers and because of this we are getting more students, sub-consciously improving their information literacy and note-taking skills.

The other devices dotted around the library are giving students quicker and better quality access to information and allowing them to be more independent in their use of the library and their studies. So much so we have extended this into our reading for pleasure areas by making kindles, talking book stations etc available to students to use for reading for pleasure. Again this is giving students more options in how they can access books and the result is that many more students are reading because these are available for them.

Lancaster’s Reading Continuum

So I’ve written a lot about research around reading and how individuals read and the kinds of things you need to put in place to create reading cultures in schools. You can read these articles here, here, here, here and also here, as well as littered through the blog.

To extend upon my thoughts regarding a hierarchy of reading and how the activate the reading brain I’ve been looking at reading in terms of a continuum, i.e. a continuous sequence of improvement. Within this there seems to be three distinct stages that a reader goes through as they first learn to read and then become proficient in the act of. The first stage is the early reading stage, earmarked for 4-9 as young people move through beginning, emerging and developing  sub stages. Each of these can also be furthered categorised by the behaviours within them. As you can see overtime and as the individual moves through the stages they grow in ability and independence in reading until you get to the point where you have an individual that is highly able and independent in all aspects of their reading.

I have taken my thoughts on the reading brain and have placed these within this model. Therefore the main parts that create a successful reader; Knowledge, Curiosity, Cognition and Grit have behaviours attached to each of the sub stages. Within this it is then possible to be able to see where a student is with their reading and potentially what it might be that is holding them back (explained in this post about the reader at a crossroads).

As the child moves through the stages they will encounter the second stage between 10-13 and will travel through the expanding, bridging and fluent stages of being able to read. This marks the transition from learning to read to reading to learn as well as the primary-secondary transition. It is worth noting at this point that this is where a child may struggle in making the transition. If, for instance, there is something holding them back in their reading abilities then they will be caught in the limbo between stages requiring intervention to allow them to make the step between the two. It is at this point that this distinction needs to be made in what the root cause is before any intervention can take place. Looking at the behaviours associated with the key success criteria (Knowledge, Curiosity, Cognition and Grit) will give you a clear idea as the why exactly they are unable to make this step up.

Once a young person has traversed their way through each of the sub stages in this ‘reading to learn’ section they move on the third and final stage of reading. This final stage is where the reader gains mastery over the skills and passes between proficient, connecting and independent. Although I suggest that the age range for this is 14-18 it is important to note that all the age ranges are an ‘average’. Young people move through reading at their own pace and just because a young person may seem behind because they haven’t moved through these stages doesn’t mean there is anything ‘wrong’. However, it is also worth noting that not all readers will progress onto this final stage. Many will plateau at stage 2 and never move on. As mentioned stage 3 is about mastery and many of the skills are akin to those needed for GCSE and A-Level but not all young people pass these or undertake them (A-Level). These individuals may not be what we would class as ‘readers’: they have the ability to process texts and to gain information from them but this is the ultimate limit of their skills. In continuing to the final stage individuals need to be regular readers; they need to access a wide range of texts for different reasons; they need to be able to connect what they have read to other things they have read or know and they need to be independent in their reading. This is way more than being independent in their choices etc it is more along the lines of knowing where to find what they need, how to go about reading ‘around subjects’ and what to do if they come across something they don’t comprehend. These are definitely a lot higher level skills that some young people will never learn to use or want to use.

Utilising this model allows us to track our students in school and see where they fit into something like this. Using the behaviour criteria we have a distinct reason why they are where they are and what we can do to move them on through the stages.
Beyond this it is a understanding of how individuals read that can be used to explain the process to a non specialist. We are using it for both these reasons as well as a guide for parents in helping them to better understand the things they might be able to do to help their child.

As far as tracking goes we are already utilising it and it is giving us a much better picture of the students we are working with.

The impact of literacy across the curriculum

 

One of the things we have been pioneering over the last couple of years is the idea of intersectionality. This is best summed up by thinking about the weakest and most vulnerable groups in your school and how these students intersect across different areas. For instance the groups that we focus on in our school are students eligible for Pupil Premium, SEND and students highlighted as having weak literacy.

Between these three groups we cover all the vulnerable students in each year group and as individuals in charge of PP, SEND and literacy we will each be working with these students in different ways. However, if we were to do this solely as individuals (as all other schools do) then the potential ‘harm’ that may be done to the student is massive. We may all involve them in different intervention strategies, give them multiple targets to work towards, each have a different dialogue with the parents etc etc.

But, in working together we are able to coordinate what needs to be done for these students in such a way that we can benefit them as much as possible. Instead of us taking them out of lessons for all the different interventions we want them to have or setting them loads of different targets that they have to try and remember we can work together to agree on the best pathway for the student.

In the diagram above you can see an example of one of our year groups and our intersectionality work. Each circle represents a one of our foci, SEND, literacy or PP. As you can see there are a number of students that come under more than one of these sections and some that intersect with all three. These are clearly students that we need to be working together with to coordinate the best pathway for them to make the most progress.

This is great evidence and tracking but also a very visual way to explain to other people the students we are working with and the numbers involved in each year group. However, from a literacy perspective this work has been invaluable not only as a literacy coordinator but also in showing staff the impact that literacy has across the school.  As you can see from the VENN at the top there is a massive link between weak literacy and SEND. 95% of students that have SEND are either categorized as this and appear on the register because they have weak literacy or because their SEND need is affecting their literacy. It therefore seems criminal for these two areas to not be working closely together. There is then the strong link between PP and weak literacy. Although it is a generalisation it does hold for a large percentage of PP students. Due to their low socio-economic background they are more likely to have literacy areas of weakness.

From these VENNs I then also produce a further piece of evidence to show the furthering impact of literacy in the classroom and it’s impact in behaviour. 3 times a year we produce data for all our students and these are contained within reports for parents. This is similar to the majority of schools with small nuances I would imagine. One of the things that teachers give students is an overall grade for their Attitude to Learn. This is made up from a number of different factors including behaviour, organisation, prep etc. They are graded from 1-4, same as the ofsted criteria, again similar to a number of schools. Using this data I then highlight students that are receiving either a 3 or 4 in more than 3 subjects. This is also cross-referenced against the number of times they have been ‘on-called’ (taken out of lessons for disruptive behaviour) and a new category is created in the VENN. This then highlights the students that have the ‘worst’ behaviour. In the VENN below you can see an example of this and can especially see the potential link between weak literacy and poor behaviour. For all the VENNs I produce on the reverse of the overall figures there is a breakdown by student name so we know exactly who the students are. I know that there is a potential that a student’s poor literacy in a lesson can affect their behaviour so part of my role is to make sure that they are catered for with the skills to be able to access the lesson but also with the correct strategies within the lesson. These strategies are importantly for the teacher as well as the student.

Through the VENNs we can see the students that need the most amount of support and where their literacy is impacting on their ability to learn in the lessons and so the strategies for the teacher, alongside the knowledge about the students weakness, helps them to adapt their teaching to cater for the student. This, especially when coupled with our ‘good literacy in the classroom is just good teaching and learning’ mantra means that these students shouldn’t slip into the category of weak literacy and poor behaviour.

The other benefit is that we can also see the students in the top category (poor behaviour) when linked to on-call data, and the final piece of information we put on the sheets; whether they are on target in English or not, we can see whether there are any whose bad behaviour is starting to affect their literacy. We want to be able to help these students before it becomes too late. This means that this information is valuable beyond our use and starts being used by heads of year and other pastoral leaders as well as senior leaders on charge of behaviour.

Tracked over the course of the year we can also see how the students move between the categories and so this allows us to prove the impact of the work we are doing as we see students move (or stay) out of the negative categories due to the work we have done with them.

Obviously this is just one small part of the work and tracking we do with students. It does however show the strong link between literacy and the classroom and how a student’s literacy can affect the learning in the classroom, further intensifying the argument that literacy needs to be tackled across the curriculum and not just in patches.