Leanne Antill
Head Teacher, English

Enriching student literacy across the curriculum

Leanne Antill, Head Teacher, English at The Riverina Anglican College, has been leading an action learning team, as part of an Australian Government Quality Teacher Programme project directed at enriching the way that literacy is taught by the various faculties at the school. A key impetus for the project was the school’s implementation of the new Years 7—10 syllabuses, all of which include a literacy focus as part of the required content.

While the school had been doing well, it seemed timely that we thought about enhancing the literacy activities that we do each day.
Leanne Antill

Greg Guise
English and Gifted and Talented

Each faculty was addressing students’ literacy needs, but not always in ways that were consistent between the various subjects. Leanne felt that a school-wide coordinated approach would create a scope and sequence for literacy across subjects, resulting in stronger literacy skills for students. Leanne and her project team, Greg Guise (English and Gifted and Talented), Sally Farmer (Special Needs and Mathematics) and Sue Graffen (Teacher-librarian), commenced their action research with an initial survey of the each faculty. This survey provided data about the particular literacy demands of the subjects taught within each faculty, and how teachers acquired the professional learning to meet those demands.

Sally Farmer
Special Needs and Mathematics

The survey data informed the school’s application for an AGQTP grant to develop and publish a range of materials that would enhance the teaching of literacy skills across the curriculum for Year 7 students. So that there would be consistency across subjects, faculties were asked to complete a second survey which collected data about the literacy demands of each Year 7 unit of work. This included information about the learn to and learn about skills, subject-specific terminology and the range of types of text encountered within the unit. A copy of the survey form is available at www.qtp.nsw.edu.au/NL072/survey.pdf (26 kb)

The team looked for commonalities amongst the units with a view to suggesting uniform ways of developing students’ literacy skills. Greg cited one example:

Sue Graffen
Teacher-librarian

All the faculties taught students how to spell the terminology of their subjects, but they used different strategies. We were interested in establishing a consistent way that spelling might be taught throughout the school.

A bank of the literacy skills common throughout all Year 7 units of work, and uniform ways of teaching these skills, will be published in print and on the school’s website. Resources are likely to include posters, charts, booklets and a package for Year 7 students. Team member and teacher-librarian, Sue, is expanding the bank to include activities and scaffolds for information literacy. Publishing these literacy and information literacy materials means that the literacy demands of the curriculum will be transparent to teachers, students and parents.