Improving Literacy in your department (links)

Want to improve literacy in your Maths department?

These 4 links will show you how:

1. From the education hub in New Zealand. It outlines some ways in which secondary school teachers may develop and enhance learning through a disciplinary literacy approach

https://theeducationhub.org.nz/literacy-across-the-curriculum-at-secondary-school/

2. Fantastic blog post giving concrete examples of how literacy could be improved in Maths

https://clarefeeneyuk.com/?p=69

3. EEF produced this guidance to help improve literacy. There are some great questions to use both in your own teaching but also with your department.

https://d2tic4wvo1iusb.cloudfront.net/eef-guidance-reports/literacy-ks3-ks4/EEF_KS3_KS4_LITERACY_GUIDANCE.pdf?v=1635355220

4. Also check out my own blog post on improving Literacy in Maths. I am hoping to add further examples and support over time.

https://cameronsetter.blogspot.com/2022/04/literacy-in-maths.html

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I'm a Maths teacher, I teach numbers. Why is Literacy so important for me? Well….here's why: "Literacy is fundamental for success in school and later life. Students who cannot read, write and communicate effectively are highly unlikely to access the challenging academic curriculum in secondary school and are more likely to have poor educational outcomes across all subjects." (Link 3) Unfortunately there are a lot of Maths teachers who believe (wrongly) that literacy is a thing that the English department do. They see it as a tick box for observations. Rather than being an essential component of students being able to learn maths. - So what does it look like in Maths? Answer the question: Blindle 4x + 6 Are you able to do it? This is the challenge a lot of students face in Mathematics. Subject specific vocabulary can seem really confusing to a lot of students. Understanding what a keyword is asking of students is often the hardest part of a question and can hold st

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This week I listened to a really good podcast episode from Greg McKeown called Where am I wrong? In it he talks about a really effective method to have deeper discussions on what is important. Write down/say the 3-5 issues/priorities you think there are as well as the cost/consequence of them. Then just simply ask where am I wrong? It starts the conversation off with the other person talking and getting their points across. You can then get that shared understanding about what needs to be done and why. It got me thinking about other areas this could be useful for e.g. dealing with conflicts, leading departments/teams, pitching a new initiative. I am going to start doing this in some of these scenarios as I think we can have more productive conversations from it. Have a listen to the episode here . 🔊 Listen: Alan Stein Jr on the Modern Wisdom podcast discussing high performance and overcoming stress. He talks about thinking like an athlete with your work and improving every part of

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Cameron Setter

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