At the National Literacy Network meeting in June 2019, Claire Bryden, Principal Teacher for literacy from Argyll and Bute Council shared literacy developments ongoing with primary and secondary colleagues. The slide above captures the ultimate aim of the strategies being developed – to ensure that:

1. All practitioners understand the importance of literacy to learning across the curriculum
2. All practitioners understand the level of challenge required when designing literacy tasks
3. Literacy is embedded within planning across the school
4. Literacy learning is made visible to learners
5. Pupils have an overview of their own literacy across the school
6. Staff provide feedback on literacy
7. All staff involved in the assessment of literacy

Click here to view Claire’s full presentation and learn how she is working with others to explore and combine a number of ideas, research sources and tools such as:

• Supporting emerging literacy inspired by a variety of sources including David Fulton
• Exploring ideas from research by Sue Ellis on the three domains of literacy
• The development of pupil vocabulary using the Storyline approach
• Developing interdisciplinary contexts which integrate STEM/science within relevant historical contexts
• Defining how these contexts could progress the degree of challenge to pupils’ literacy skills and development across the curriculum in primary and secondary settings (see below)

• Focus on the development of pupil skills – supporting these by creating simple, effective tools for pupils and staff to use during teaching (see below)

• Linking all of these developments to aim for a shared, firm understanding of standards and appropriate pace and challenge for literacy across learning
• Applying Improvement Science methodology to track and evidence impact