The Literacy Handbook

newsletter #1

Show how brilliant you can be

Welcome to the first newsletter.

The purpose of the newsletter is to share simple and – as a result – sustainable ideas with you on how to improve learning, confidence and exam results.

Our first newsletter shares classroom ideas for every subject on:

boosting boys’ learning, while also enrichening girls’ education too
teaching young people how to find trustworthy information
the art of debate
inspirational quotes for class discussion and school displays

How to boost boys’ achievement

The statistics tell us that boys are doing significantly worse than girls. At age 11, 70% of girls reach the expected standard in reading, writing and maths, for boys, it’s just 60%. At age 16, two-thirds of the top grades at GCSE are awarded to girls.

As teachers, you will appreciate that there may be a need for system-led change to ensure all young people can shine (given the dire personal, societal and economic consequences if not). But for now, what can be done on a classroom level to ensure that boys have every opportunity, while also enrichening girls’ learning too?

Here are the top 3:

1. What’s the point?

Be explicit in how the learning activity may result in doing better in exams. Share student-friendly marks schemes (even better, co-write with your students), so they see the associated marks. Show them exemplar exam scripts where students have shown the knowledge or skill, and others which haven’t, and improve them together.

Of course, for some students, doing better in exams isn’t enough motivation. For these students, link learning with real-life as much as possible so that boys can see how it will have an immediate impact on their lives, as well as in the long-term beyond school.

For topics that are challenging to connect to the real-world, focus on replicating the teaching and learning to simulate real-life experiences: introduce risk-taking, a seemingly impossible challenge or competition, and emphasise the literacy skills required to do it successfully. As all learning requires literacy, point out how the reading, writing, speaking, listening or thinking skills needed for the learning task will – no matter what a young person is interested in doing beyond school – enable them to be better at it.

2. Word power

Boys (overall) read less for pleasure than girls, resulting in a vocabulary gap which diminishes boys’ ability to engage with the curriculum, thus impacting learning and exam results.

Boys need to read, and more importantly, enjoy reading. Here are some ways to introduce reading in a way that minimises stress and anxiety, promotes reading and learning and builds confidence.

When appropriate (say in Drop Everything and Read sessions), let boys read what they want so that they associate reading with pleasure. In lessons, provide them with a choice of source material. Exposing boys to a variety of texts adds interest, allows them to become critical readers looking at purpose and audience (thus helping their writing), as well as being excellent exam preparation. When choosing material, be careful not to dumb down. Far better to prepare students before the reading activity (re-visiting previous learning, introducing keywords) and support them during and after reading. Offer support on how to tackle unknown words. There are lots of quick and easy strategies for doing this in The Literacy Handbook for Teachers.

3. Like to move it, move it!

Most boys (as you well know) are not fans of sitting down quietly at their desks — some girls neither (in fact, one-third of girls are more physically active than the average boy.)
So, do your students need to sit down to learn?

Tweak your activities to allow everyone to move around.

Here are some examples:

For gathering information: try a Jigsaw or Envoy activity. Jigsaw is when students get into groups. Each member of the group is given a specialist area within that topic. Group members discuss the topic, identifying what they need to find out. Each member then joins another group whose members have the same specialist area. Each group explores their specialist area in detail. After a set time, all members return to their original group to share the information they’ve gathered.

For developing critical thinking: try ‘Influences.

For consolidating knowledge: drama sketches, hot-seating, chat-shows.

For a full list of learning activities that require students to move around, see The Literacy Handbook for Teachers p36.

Links to the handbooks:

If you want to learn more about how to boost boys’ progress, check out the links below:

A Guide to Greatness

‘Literacy myth-busters’ p8
‘The 10 skills you need…and 5 quick fixes’ p10
‘How to intelligently guess the meaning of a word’ p14
‘How to read difficult stuff’ p15
‘How to become a ridiculously good reader’ p22
‘How to know more words’ p23

The Literacy Handbooks for Teachers:

‘Show that reading is fun (no matter what subject you teach)’ p5
‘Know what your students are capable of reading’ p6
‘Make reading interesting’ p7
‘Engage students who think they hate reading’ p9
‘Help your students have great vocabulary’ p10
‘Teach the reading skills students need to be successful in exams’ p11
‘Get your reluctant writers writing’ p19
‘A note on boys and writing’ p20
‘Teach the writing skills students need to be successful in exams’ p23
‘Create interesting speaking and listening activities to improve subject learning’ p35 (this includes the full list of learning activities that require students to move around)

How to find trustworthy information

‘An unquestioned assertion is as good as a truth.’ – Steve Shahbazian

It’s vital now, more than ever, that students are savvy users of media.

Having the tools to spot disinformation can result in empowered individuals that have control over their knowledge, opinions and can make valuable contributions as citizens. Not having these skills can result in anxiety, alienation and mistrust.

Here are some simple ways of teaching this vital strand of literacy in your school:

Invite a journalist in to discuss the topic with students, specifically: possible motivations people may have to produce fake news, the accountabilities of media (i.e. newspapers versus online web content)
Show students how to check the authenticity of articles, including the use of images and deep fakes (for more on this go to A Guide to Greatness p18)
Look at how social media uses personal information to shape feeds and influence its users
Ask your students to produce fake news, so they understand the techniques used and appreciate how easy it is to make fake news look credible

Young people will – overall – be more technology-savvy than teachers, yet what teachers may lack in technological know-how can be made-up by our broad-knowledge of potential bias, motivations and persuasions…so you could say it’s the perfect combination!

The art of debate

We’re hard-wired to prefer consensus over conflict, safety in numbers, so we’re told. Scientists also say that we’re attracted towards opinions that mirror our own. Personal bias, therefore, combined with consensus, is a powerful thing.

And yet we also know from history, that not challenging personal bias and consensus can also be a dangerous thing, to the individual yes, but also to populations.

There are lots of reasons to love an argument or debate, far from fuelling conflict, it can:
– Improve ideas, the ideas that would be corkers in exams
– Increases our knowledge as we learn about opposing views
– Improves our empathy – vital for problem-solving

There are two essential skills needed for successful debate: the ability to listen and to ask questions.

We focus on developing superb listening skills in this newsletter, and in February’s edition, we’ll share ideas on asking excellent questions.

Here are simple and effective ways of improving the quality of debate through improving listening skills:

Co-write (with your students) ground rules for listening
Ask your students to recap so you can check their understanding
Create engaging speaking and listening group activities; students are interested in what their peers have to say. The group activities mentioned in ‘How to boost boys’ achievement’ above are great. For more ideas, check out The Literacy Handbook for Teachers p36
Vary your praise and responses, referring to students’ inputs, so that students look forward to your feedback and know you’re interested
Have specific listening exercises, e.g. devise note-making grids for students to complete while listening to presentations; play bingo, replacing numbers with key learning objectives. For more ideas, see The Literacy Handbook for Teachers p 26, 35, 36, 38