As the daughter of an English teacher and a student blissfully unaware of her literacy privilege, my school-aged reading experiences were those we love to promote in our Reading for Pleasure initiatives at Villiers High School. Reading has unlocked my education, my imagination and, ultimately, my real passion - teaching.
Stop, re-evaluate and re-strategise
20 years of English teaching, eight of those as a Head of English and five as a Literacy Lead, has led me to a clear conclusion - teaching something that you never really remember learning is tricky. Teaching it to students with English as an Additional Language is tricky. Teaching it post-Covid in a screen dominated world is tricky.
The complexity of this very real and growing challenge makes it necessary for those of us leading on literacy in secondary schools to stop, re-evaluate and re-strategise.
A timely arrival
The invite to preview the Unlocking Reading programme squeezed its way into my email inbox just as reviewing the whole school literacy strategy was creeping ever upwards on my to-do list.
Disenchanted with the literacy initiatives that have done the rounds, the challenges of recruiting a librarian and the eternal lack of time and staff, I knew I needed to change tack - but to what?
Back to basics
Unlocking Reading took me back to basics. It served as a timely reminder that a strategy for literacy must acknowledge two things:
1. Literacy development is complex, non-linear and unique to each individual and their specific barriers.
2. Literacy strategies must be bespoke to our specific contexts.
The needs-based approach throughout the programme led me out of the murk and gave me the clarity I needed to confront my strategic blank page.
Putting a plan into action
Rewinding back to the science of reading and clarifying the fundamental concepts behind how we acquire language is crucial in designing literacy programmes. For time poor school teachers and leaders, having this digested and delivered to us by academics allows us to get on with the business of putting a meaningful plan into action.
I also enjoyed the research avenues the training sent me down as the sessions pulled together the most relevant contemporary research for our phase.
Motivation after reading failure
But perhaps the real key to Unlocking Reading is its focus on secondary school literacy demands. By ensuring that these materials are secondary phase specific, the programme acknowledges the very particular demands of our context.
The programme acknowledges that learning to read as a teenager is a very specific challenge and that it’s impossible to support these young people if we don’t understand and target the motivational barriers that exist for many of them after years of reading failure.
Building a new plan
Too often school leaders plough forwards, reacting to the next problem or challenge without stopping to truly re-calibrate and totally rethink our approach to the fundamentals of what we do.
Literacy is a fundamental in secondary education, no matter your context. It cannot be solved on the fly or by an external company with a shiny new tool.
Literacy strategy requires time, thought, collaboration and courage. I’ve pressed delete on my old strategy and started again with a flip-chart, some post-its, my key stakeholders and our refreshed knowledge and ideas following the Unlocking Reading programme.
I don't profess to have the perfect plan, but I know that we have the foundations to build something meaningful and sustainable for the young people we serve.
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