Academic Literacy
Academic Literacy
“Our aim is to develop confident and highly literate students who are capable of sharing their thoughts and learning, within and beyond The Oaks Academy.”
Core Principles
The Oaks Academy accepts the fundamental principle that literacy is the key to improving learning and raising standards; it enables pupils to gain access to the subjects studied in schools, to read for information and pleasure, and to communicate effectively in both written and spoken contexts. Poor levels of literacy impact negatively on what pupils can do and how they see themselves. At The Oaks Academy we recognise that all teachers are teachers of the English Language. We are committed to ensuring that the literacy levels of all students, at all stages, are of a standard that can drive their learning across the whole curriculum. Literacy therefore underpins the school curriculum by developing students’ abilities to confidently speak, listen, read and write for a wide range of purposes, using language to learn and communicate, to think, explore and organise. Supporting students to express themselves clearly orally and in writing enhances and enriches teaching and learning in all subjects. Consequently, all Curriculum Areas and all teachers have a crucial role to play in supporting students’ academic literacy development.
There are three strands to supporting your literacy development:
- Academic Language: Ensuring students have a good command of subject specific academic language, to ensure all students make excellent progress in every subject.
- Oracy and Articulacy: Ensuring all students can speak, read and write with fluency.
- Cultural Literacy: Developing a good understanding of the essential knowledge that students need to be able to flourish and have an appreciation of human creativity, achievement and the world around them.
Literacy is a key component of becoming a successful and employable citizen of an ever-advancing world. Every member of staff at The Oaks Academy strives to embed literacy in their everyday responsibilities; literacy is integral to every facet of successful learning. It is not the sole responsibility of the English Department, but rather should be fostered and actively taught across all disciplines. The Oaks Academy literacy strategy takes the recent guidance from the EEF Report (2019) and has sought to embed literacy instruction within all curriculum areas. The EEF Report states that Disciplinary Literacy has been identified as the most impactful strategy in improving literacy in secondary schools, and at The Oaks Academy, we will ensure our pupils can confidently ‘write like a scientist’, ‘read like a historian’ and ‘speak like a mathematician’.
