The secondary curriculum can open-up exciting learning opportunities with specialist teachers and new subjects, but it also challenges students to think and communicate in far more complex and abstract ways, and to read and write in an increasingly academic register.
Subject content is frequently conveyed through academic texts that students can find challenging to understand and critique, with patterns of language that are very different from those they may have typically encountered in primary school (Fang, 2012).
Therefore, it becomes increasingly important that students are trained to access the academic language and conventions of different subjects (Quigley & Coleman, 2018).
Don’t leave it to chance
As they enter secondary school, students will require more sophisticated support for reading in content areas and subject disciplines. This is a more advanced form of literacy – what is known as “disciplinary literacy” (Lee & Spratley, 2009).
But disciplinary literacy cannot be left to chance – it must be taught explicitly.
In her research examining the linguistic challenge of transition to secondary school, Alice Diegnan cites an interview with a secondary teacher, who explains that the issue is not the students’ ability to think or understand concepts, but rather their ability to access the material given to them (Deignan et al, 2022).
Reading in secondary school is a demanding and complex skill that requires disciplinary mastery.
During any given school day, students may be exposed to a wide range of texts, each requiring a different repertoire of disciplinary reading skills. In history, students may be asked to read a range of text types – documents, newspaper articles, letters, photographs – to corroborate information or examine how word choice communicates first or second order concepts.
In English, students read to understand how an author uses rhetorical and figurative devices to invite the reader into an imaginary world.
In geography, students may read to identify causal factors and consider physical and human impact.
In science, reading may require knowledge and understanding of technical language, mathematical literacy to interpret tables, and visual literacy skills to read diagrams – skills which often need to be deployed simultaneously to make sense of the whole text.
In maths, students may be making meaning out of a complex semiotic field that includes words, numbers, letters, symbols, pictures, graphs, and tables. In these cases, reading effectively may not always require them to read from left to right.
It is easy to see how cognitive overload can quickly set in and confidence and motivation be eroded.
Three ways to support literacy in your subject
1, Activate your own disciplinary knowledge
What does it mean to read like an expert in your subject? Think about the skills you need. As an expert reader in your discipline, you will know what skills are needed, though perhaps you haven't consciously thought about them.
Try to articulate what these skills are. Open-up the discussion with other colleagues in your subject to pool knowledge and expertise.
The Reading in the disciplines report (Lee & Spratley, 2009) is free to download and is helpful in signposting some of the key features of reading in the subject disciplines. The Education Endowment Foundation guidance document Improving literacy in secondary schools (Quigley & Coleman, 2018) is another useful reference point.
2, Revisit your year 7 curriculum with a disciplinary lens
Curriculum intent: Discuss and arrive at a consensus with your subject colleagues on what the purpose for reading is in your subject and what it means to “read like a subject expert”. Try to crystallise this into a few bullet-points that can be communicated to students at the start of the year.
Curriculum implementation: To actively engage with what they are reading, students need to use existing subject knowledge. Find out what knowledge and skills students are bringing with them. What prior knowledge will they need to understand the text and how will you establish what they already know? Knowledge organisers such as KWL grids are a useful way of activating prior learning, providing opportunities for students to draw on previous knowledge to construct new learning. They draw out what students already know (K), what they would like to know (W), and evaluate what they have learnt at the end of the process or topic (L).
Curriculum implementation: Identify the disciplinary vocabulary students need to access and understand a text. Consider both tier 2 (high-frequency words found in many disciplines) and tier 3 (subject-specific) vocabulary. What words and phrases will you need to focus on? Organising words into meaningful patterns in your subject, drawing on etymology (their origin) and morphology (structure and parts of words), e.g. hydro as the root word from ancient Greek meaning water, can be particularly helpful in STEM subjects.
Curriculum implementation: Identify and plan for the specific reading skills they need to access each key text and how you will model and make these skills explicit. Do your current autumn term texts provide enough opportunity to explore these skills? Could you choose better examples?
Curriculum impact: At the end of the autumn term, take time to consider how effective the texts you have given students have been in exemplifying the disciplinary literacy skills of your subject. Do you need to make any changes?
3, Consider audio texts to support disciplinary literacy
Podcasts are a great way to introduce your students not just to the content of your subject but also its disciplinary language, providing an opportunity to hear how specialists in the field of each subject communicate. They can be an engaging source of information as well as a rich repository of tier 2 and 3 language. The National Literacy Trust has a range of teacher resources and research using podcasts and audiobooks (see below).
Final thought
In 2022, more than a quarter of children left primary school unable to read and write well for their age (DfE, 2022)
For a significant proportion of students who lack the literacy skills to access the secondary curriculum, transition can quickly turn into a challenging experience.
Literacy for Learning is the National Literacy Trust’s secondary school improvement programme. It campaigns to raise the profile of disciplinary literacy and provides professional development and training for teachers on how to teach literacy in their subject.
Furthermore, Literacy for Learning’s national conference, Changing Perspectives on Literacy, taking place in Nottingham on July 3, will explore reading in adolescence, including the transition from primary to secondary school.
Literacy for Learning’s virtual reading week also takes place from June 19 to 23 and will explore ways to optimise reading opportunities to enable older students to read with fluency and comprehension (see below).
- Nisha Tank is manager of the School Improvement Programme at the National Literacy Trust.
Changing Perspectives on Literacy
The National Literacy Trust Secondary School Conference takes place in Nottingham on July 3, 2023. For details, visit https://literacytrust.org.uk/events/secondary-school-conference/
National Literacy Trust resources
- Literacy for Learning
- CPD and training for teaching literacy in your subject
- Podcasts and literacy resources
- Speaking and listening resources
- Virtual Reading Week 2023
Further information & references
- Deignan, Canderali & Oxley: The Linguistic Challenge of the Transition to Secondary School: A corpus study of academic language, Routledge, 2022.
- DfE: Academic year 2021/22: Key stage 2 attainment: National headlines, 2022: https://bit.ly/43HtJlv
- Fang: The challenges of reading disciplinary texts. In Adolescent Literacy in the Academic Disciplines, Jetton & Shanahan (eds), The Guilford Press, 2012.
- Lee & Spratley: Reading in the disciplines: The challenges of adolescent literacy, final report from Carnegie Corporation of New York’s Council on Advancing Adolescent Literacy, 2009: https://bit.ly/3qvkJl6
- Quigley & Coleman: Improving literacy in secondary schools, Education Endowment Foundation, 2018: https://bit.ly/3oUVWGJ