Disciplinary Literacy

• Teaching pupils to recognise that literacy in vocabulary, reading, writing and oracy are not only the goal, but tools to be utilised in supporting development. Lesson resources are designed to combine pupils’ abilities to read, write, speak and think critically in the context of their English studies.
• Explicit instruction and modelling of a range of different reading strategies to support pupils in identifying appropriate textual references, make inferences and deductions and synthesising information.
• Using pupils’ knowledge of learning to read in order to make explicit the system for reading to learn.
• Bespoke intervention to address gaps in pupil’s knowledge and literacy skills, from phonic instruction to targeted reading intervention.

Targeted Vocabulary Instruction

We adopt an approach of front-loading lessons with vocabulary to unlock learning throughout the lesson sequence. This includes the use of:

• Vocabulary banks of key tier 2 and 3 subject terminology. 
• Frayer models to introduce new concepts within the course. 
• Examining the etymology of words.
• Examining the morphology of words, including common affixes and root words. 
• Through discussion, teachers are trained to recognise, and identify with pupils, vocabulary that can be used at a cross-curriculum level.
• Lessons are adapted to include phonic instruction for new keywords/terminology.
• Pupils will have the opportunity to demonstrate their vocabulary acquisition through regular knowledge quizzes and extended writing tasks. 

Reading Comprehension

• Pupils are explicitly taught different reading strategies such as skimming, scanning and in-depth reading.
• Teachers’ use of comprehension tasks and questioning strategies to support development of pupil knowledge.
• Pupils are taught key reading skills such as summarising, synthesising and comparing.
• Pupils have a range of reading experiences including teacher reading as the expert, audiobooks to accompany text reading and opportunities to read out loud.
• Use of peer and self-assessment strategies (such as reciprocal questioning) to monitor their own comprehension and identify areas for improvement.
• Applying inference and deduction skills to develop comprehension and analytical skills.
• Pupils with significant gaps in their reading comprehension ability are involved in intervention whether that be for phonic instruction, decoding, word recognition or language comprehension.

Academic Talk

• Using whole class discussion to explore and develop conceptual knowledge.
• Oracy strategies such as ‘Think-pair-share’, discussion “roles” and ‘Turn-and-Talk’.
• The difference between exploratory and presentational oracy are distinguished between in lesson content.
• Every half term, pupils are expected to participate in a speaking assessment including choral readings, individual/group presentations and whole class discussion.
• A ‘Say it again’ strategy is implemented to encourage boys to deliver verbal answers using academic language and formal syntax.
• Pupils with the most significant literacy gaps will have an adapted curriculum in which oracy is used to develop conceptual knowledge and plan for extended writing tasks.

Scaffolded Writing Activities

• Writing scaffolds are differentiated across all year groups. Students are taught to structure paragraphs (WHW, PEE etc.).
• Teachers use metacognitive strategies such as ‘Sentence Stacking’, ‘Slow Writing’ and live modelling to make thinking an explicit part of the writing process and demonstrate self-editing/proofreading.
• Essay writing frames are provided for extended critical analysis writing tasks.
• Structural writing frames are provided for creative narrative writing and transactional writing tasks.
• Vocabulary banks of tier 2 and 3 words are provided.
• Word banks of sentence starters, discourse markers and connectives are provided.
• Modelling annotation and analysis of textual resources.