The SecEd Podcast: Developing students' literacy skills

This episode looks at how we can best develop the literacy skills of our students, offering whole-school, cross-curricular and classroom-specific ideas, interventions and tips.

The podcast defines literacy as the ability to speak, read and write and to understand and use language in order to communicate effectively.

We welcome four guests from four schools who discuss the range of approaches, programmes, and interventions they use to support students' literacy.

We ask why literacy skills are so important, what form these skills take in practice, and how we can help students to develop these skills.

Our guests discuss the interventions and programmes they use to support literacy catch-up and how they go about identifying students most in need of these interventions.

How can we ensure that all teachers see themselves as teachers of literacy and teach the vocabulary of their subjects? What is the role of phonics in secondary literacy education, especially post-Covid?

We talk vocabulary and disciplinary literacy. How can we teach vocabulary effectively and explicitly? How can we close the vocab gap? How can we embed vital disciplinary literacy? How do we develop speaking and listening skills?

We talk Ofsted too – what inspectors looks for and how we can ensure that our literacy work also meets inspection requirements.