[lg policy] Language Policy of the Ridgeway School

Sat May 28 14:51:42 UTC 2011

The Ridgeway School and Sixth Form College
Literacy and Language Policy

‘Students should be taught in all subjects to express themselves
correctly and appropriately and to read accurately and with
understanding.’

QCA Use of Language Across the Curriculum

All teachers are teachers of literacy. As such, staff at The Ridgeway
School and Sixth
Form College are committed to developing literacy skills in all of our
students, in the
belief that it will support their learning and raise standards across
the curriculum,
because:
 students need vocabulary, expression and organisational control to
cope with the
cognitive demands of subjects;
 reading helps us to learn from sources beyond our immediate experience;
 writing helps us to sustain and order thought;
 language helps us to reflect, revise and evaluate the things we do,
and on the things
others have said, written or done;
 responding to higher order questions encourages the development of
thinking skills
and enquiry;
 improving literacy and learning can have an impact on students’
self-esteem, on
motivation and behaviour. It allows them to learn independently. It is
empowering.

Implementation at whole-school level

Language is the prime medium through which students learn and express themselves
across the curriculum, and all teachers have a stake in effective literacy.
Roles and Responsibilities
 Senior Managers: lead and give a high profile to literacy;
 English Faculty: provide students with knowledge, skills and
understanding they
need to read, write and speak and listen effectively;
 Teachers across the curriculum: contribute to students’ development
of language,
since speaking, listening, writing and reading are, to varying
degrees, integral to all
lessons;
 Literacy co-ordinator: supports faculties in the implementation of
strategies and
encourages faculties to learn from each other’s practice by sharing ideas.
 Parents: encourage their children to use the range of strategies
they have learnt to
improve their levels of literacy;
 Students: take increasing responsibility for recognising their own
literacy needs and
making improvements;
 Governors: an identified governor meets with staff and students and
report progress
and issues to the governing body and to parents in the governors’ annual report.
Across the school we:
1. Integrate the use of non-fiction writing frames across all relevant
subject areas
including publication on FROG so that they are accessible to parents and
students.
2. Identify the strengths and weaknesses in students’ work from across
the school.
3. Implement cross-curricular literacy priorities termly.
4. Seek to identify progression in the main forms of reading, writing,
speaking and
listening undertaken in each faculty and strengthen teaching plans accordingly.
5. Raise the profile of literacy within the community through the
annual Readathon,
entry into local and national writing and public speaking competitions and mock
trials, Reading Champions program, and involvement in the local
Literacy Festival,
6. Review this literacy policy annually.

Speaking and Listening

We teach students to use language precisely and coherently. They
should be able to
listen to others, and to respond and build on their ideas and views
constructively.
We teach students how to participate orally in groups and in the whole
class, including:
using talk to develop and clarify ideas; identifying the main points
to arise from a
discussion; listening for a specific purpose; discussion and evaluation.
Reading
We aim to give students a level of literacy that will enable them to
cope with the
increasing demands of subjects in terms of specific skills, knowledge
and understanding.
This applies particularly in the area of reading (including from the
screen), as texts
become more demanding.
We build on and share existing good practice. We will teach students
strategies to help
them to: read with greater understanding; locate and use information;
follow a process or
argument; summarise; synthesise and adapt what they learn from their reading.
We continue to develop the use of the library as a reading and
learning resource through
the development of the Enquiring Minds project, a centre for homework
and to coordinate
community literacy projects.
Writing
It is important that we provide for co-ordination across subjects to
recognise and
reinforce students’ language skills, through:
 Making connections between students’ reading and writing, so that
students have
clear models for their writing;
 Using the modelling process to make explicit to students how to write;
 Being clear about audience and purpose;
 Providing opportunities for a range of writing including sustained writing.
Training
Staff training needs are met through material in the Literacy Across
the Curriculum folder
which will contain useful strategies such as the management of group
talk and listening,
through opt-in development sessions and with further whole school
training as required.
6
Monitoring and Evaluation
We make use of available data to assess the standards of students’
literacy. Senior
managers, the Head of English and the literacy co-ordinator, will
decide how to monitor
progress in the school.
Approaches are:
 sampling work – both students’ work and faculty schemes;
 observation – student pursuit and literacy teaching;
 meetings;
 student interviews;
 scrutiny of development plans;
 encouraging faculties to share good practice by exhibiting or
exemplifying students’
work.
Including All Students
Students of The Ridgeway School and Sixth Form College are entitled to
our highest
expectations and support. Some will need additional support and others
will need to be
challenged and extended. Strategies that we use include:
 questioning;
 adjusting the demands of the task;
 the use of additional support;
 use of group structures;
 resources;
 making objectives clear;
 creating an atmosphere where students evaluate their own others’ work.
In addition the school will offer the following:
SEN
In Years 7 and 8, small Nurture Groups have been established to assist
the transition of
low attaining and vulnerable students into the school. In 2010/11,
these Nurture groups,
of about 12 students each, are taught by a special needs teacher for English,
Geography, History, PHSE and RE (Year 7) and English, PHSE and RE (Year 8). The
objective here is to deliver an adapted and highly differentiated
curriculum with an
emphasis on language and literacy skills.
The Learning Support (SEN) Faculty provides specialist literacy
teaching on a withdrawal
basis for some students who have significant literacy difficulties,
particularly those who
are severely dyslexic
7
Teachers across the curriculum are kept informed about which students
are participating
in these programmes and are encouraged to liaise with and support the
teacher of these
students.
Intervention
Intervention will also be used to assist students that are failing to
make appropriate
progress. This is will include:
Offering 121 tutoring in years 8 and 9,
A program of intervention at KS4 including generic, for borderline C/D
students with weak
literacy, and specific English Exam intervention
English as an Additional Language
Our students learning EAL need to hear good examples of spoken English
and also to
refer to their first language skills to aid new learning in all
subjects of the curriculum. The
use of their first language enables them to draw on existing subject
knowledge and to
develop English language skills in context. For example, a group of
students can learn
about paragraph organisation in their mother tongue. The EAL folder,
on the G drive,
provides examples of strategies that can be used to help students cope
with acquiring
English as an additional language.

More at: http://www.ridgewayschool.com/policies08/Literacy%20and%20Language%20Policy.pdf

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