Our mission for literacy provision
Our core belief is that every child is entitled to an education where literacy is at the heart of the curriculum. We believe pupils must leave school fulfilling their academic potential and, as confident communicators and learners, flourish in the real world.
Hackney’s high performing schools lead the way in literacy provision and outcomes. We work with over 200 schools nationally to ensure every one of our partner settings can offer outstanding literacy provision and develop exemplary leaders who can nurture all teachers to be self-assured practitioners of literacy.
What we offer/what we do
Hackney Education offers a broad and exciting suite of literacy packages tailored to individual school needs and requirements including evidence based programmes to support leadership of literacy. We provide the following services:
Whole school approaches
- Evaluating and reviewing existing whole school literacy provision, systems and strategies
- Monitoring the implementation and impact of new literacy across the curriculum policies and strategies
- Producing a whole school literacy policy for sustained outcomes
- Leading literacy across the curriculum learning walks
- Introducing literacy interventions for underachieving pupils
- Running whole school audits to gauge attitudes to literacy
- Organising and developing literacy steering groups to drive policy
- Increasing parental participation and empowering parents to support literacy across the curriculum
- Work scrutiny for cross-curricular literacy and learning
- Setting up pupil focus groups to measure the success of literacy provision
- Developing successful whole school marking policies and effective literacy feedback
Coaching and support for leadership
- Identifying literacy across the curriculum goals and long-term outcomes using evidenced based tools for desired change
- Coaching deputy heads to line-manage literacy leads for the best results
- Coaching literacy leaders to deliver powerful whole school approaches for literacy across the curriculum
- Developing school governors to support literacy and to improve accountability
- Supporting school librarians to develop programmes, resources and processes which contribute to all pupils’ success
Training
- Delivering whole school training on any aspect of literacy across the curriculum and literacy intervention
Examples of whole school training and teacher CPD sessions
Oracy
- Developing Professional English In Classroom Talk – Bridge Academy
- Utilising Think, Pair, Share in Year 7 To Raise Achievement – Stoke Newington School
- The Benefits of Group Talk: How to Group Pupils For Rich Outcomes – Cardinal Pole School
- Dialogic Talk: How Talk For Learning Can Transform Outcomes – Yesodey Hatorah Girls’ School
Reading
- Improving Whole School Reading and Comprehension With Reciprocal Teaching – Lubavitch Senior Girls’ School
- How To Make Reading and Writing Fun, Creative and Accessible for all Pupils – Petchey Academy
- Building a Vibrant Reading Culture in Your School – Hackney University Technical College
Writing
- Extended Writing: How To Model Effectively – Norwood School
- Strategies For Improving Academic Writing At Key Stage 3 and 4 – City Academy
General Teaching and Learning
- Literacy Across the Curriculum Is Good Teaching and Learning – Skinners’ Academy
- Driving Whole School Strategies As a Literacy Leader: What Do You Need? – ‘Literacy: The Key To Success’ Conference
- Line Managing a Literacy Coordinator: Less is More – ‘Literacy: The Key To Success’ Conference
Flagship Literacy Programmes for Key Stage 3 and 4
We currently offer two flagship programmes to ensure schools can offer their pupils outstanding literacy provision: the LIT Programme and Leading In Literacy.
LIT Programme
The LIT Programme offers an alternative acceleration curriculum to pupils who start secondary school working below age related expectations. Described as a ‘game changing intervention’, this programme has a proven track record of success with pupils making on average between 3 – 5 years of progress in a single academic year.
It is designed to improve thinking, spoken English, grammar, reading and writing skills of struggling Year 7 pupils. This cutting-edge literacy programme is proven to boost attainment at Key Stage 3.
Leading In Literacy (LIL)
LIL is an intensive professional development package for literacy across the curriculum leads, coordinators and SLT members who line manage literacy. Through modelling, coaching and training, literacy leads and SLT are provided with practical methods for reviewing and auditing current literacy provision, effective strategies for whole school training on pedagogy and practice and implementation strategies for successful long-term impact.
A Hackney Education literacy specialist conducts a whole school learning walk, book look and audit and uses this data for identifying areas of development for the school. The package offers templates for best practice in literacy across the curriculum, a report on areas for development and a comprehensive action plan for moving a school forward.
Wider literacy offer
Over the past 10 years we have offered a range of opportunities to literacy leads, senior leaders with responsibility for literacy and literacy intervention teachers including:
- Joining our popular literacy network meetings for Hackney’s literacy leads
- Signing up for our LIT Programme network hub visits which facilitate good practice insights and outcomes
- Attending literacy events and training including our literacy conference in 2015 ‘Literacy: The Key to Success’
- Following us on Twitter or Linked to accessing case studies from the UK about literacy across the curriculum
- Accessing our online resource area for schools who buy our products
- Developing Diverse Shorts - a richly diverse range of texts to promote critical thinking