Teaching challenge

Mr Jones is increasingly successful in developing pupils’ mental models and helping them to grasp crucial ideas. However, he has become concerned that their written work is not keeping pace with their understanding. He notices pupils struggling to master and use technical vocabulary, and to articulate key ideas clearly. How can Mr Jones improve pupils’ literacy within his subject, and more generally?

Key idea

Teachers can improve pupils’ literacy – in general and specific to their subject – through explicit teaching, modelling, and carefully-planned reading, writing and speaking activities.

Evidence summary

Every lesson is a chance to improve pupils’ literacy

To understand a text, pupils must both recognise the words (by decoding what sounds the letters make in this combination) and comprehend their meaning (EEF, 2018). English and literacy lessons support pupils to improve in both.

However, Mr Jones sees every lesson as a chance to improve pupils’ literacy. Partly, this is because every lesson is a chance to reinforce and build upon what pupils learn in English and literacy lessons. Pupils benefit from additional opportunities to increase their vocabulary, to read and to practise articulating their thoughts; this may also help them to grasp the underlying principles better. In particular, additional opportunities to read are one of the most powerful ways to encounter new knowledge and to increase their vocabulary (Willingham, 2009).

Moreover, English and literacy lessons do not teach the technical terms and styles of writing specific to different subjects (Scott et al., 2018): each teacher must teach the vocabulary and writing structures specific to their subject.

Developing pupils’ vocabulary

Mr Jones plans to improve pupils’ vocabulary in the same way he plans other aspects of the lesson. He identifies critical words – high-frequency words that pupils will use often and high-utility words that are particularly important in his subject – and introduces them explicitly. He finds it useful to distinguish between:

Tier 1 vocabulary: Everyday words, which might need to be taught explicitly, such as ‘good’, ‘child’ or ‘Sunday’.
Tier 2 vocabulary: Words which appear across the curriculum but less commonly in everyday speech, such as ‘examine’, ‘deceive’ or ‘forthright’.
Tier 3 vocabulary: Words which are specific to a subject: for example, in science, pupils need to grasp the scientific meaning of terms such as ‘evaporation’ (Beck et al., 2002; EEF, 2018).

His focus is on teaching Tier 2 words – which pupils are unlikely to pick up without teaching – and Tier 3 words, which they are unlikely to encounter outside his lessons.

Modelling reading and writing

Models are a powerful way to show pupils how to articulate key ideas. Models help pupils understand new processes and ideas by making them more concrete and accessible (Willingham, 2009). For any written task, pupils need to see an example – or ideally more than one – and break it into its constituent parts: this may mean examining examples of coherent sentences, clear reports or well-structured essays. Pupils can use these as models to guide their own writing. Likewise, teachers can model the process of reading and writing: for example, articulating their own thinking such as the questions and predictions they are making, or showing pupils how expert readers comprehend texts (EEF, 2016).

Talking is preparation for writing

Classroom dialogue is an opportunity for pupils to practise articulating ideas clearly: this is both valuable for its own sake and to consolidate pupils’ understanding in preparation for their writing. Promoting better talk practices in classrooms directly improves pupils’ outcomes in core subjects and appears to improve their confidence and participation (Jay et al., 2017). For example, Mr Jones might model accurate use of terminology and the language structures he hopes pupils will use. He could also invite pupils to articulate their ideas fully and accurately in speech. Doing so is an opportunity for them to practise and refine how they express ideas, making subsequent writing easier.

Nuances and caveats

While literacy development can be a feature of every lesson, some will lend themselves to this better than others. All subjects have specialist vocabulary which pupils should be taught to use accurately; likewise, all subjects can promote high-quality talk during discussion.

However, if the key learning goal is practical – learning to pass a football correctly, shade accurately or master times tables – teachers should not feel that they are expected to create written activities solely to promote generic literacy.

Promoting literacy might also look different at different ages. For example, for younger pupils, a priority is reading fluently and writing fluently and legibly, whereas once pupils have mastered this they may benefit from improving their reading comprehension skills, or from more time planning, drafting and editing their writing (EEF, 2018).

Promoting reading for pleasure, by using a range of whole-class reading approaches and regularly exposing pupils to high-quality texts, can also support literacy development (EEF, 2016).

Key takeaways

Mr Jones can help pupils to improve their literacy by:

identifying literacy goals for a topic, such as vocabulary to use, challenging texts to read, and forms of writing to practise
sharing and breaking down models of the reading and writing he hopes pupils will master
planning opportunities for high-quality talk, which use key vocabulary to articulate crucial ideas

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