Literacy

Commas, colons, connectives and conjunctions

Phil Beadle

• Publisher: Independent Thinking Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781781351284
• eBook ISBN: 9781781351796
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Literacy is important. This book is about getting it right. Its author is an expert in teaching children how to speak and write well, and has transformed the oral and written communication skills of many thousands of students. In How to Teach: Literacy he shares how he does it and what he knows about this most important of all skills and reveals what every teacher needs to know in order to radically transform literacy standards across the curriculum. The stories, anecdotes and insights into the many practical activities in this book are, in turn, and often in the same sentence, heart breaking, inspiring, shocking and, as ever, funnier and more readable than those in an education book have any right to be. Contains everything teachers need to know to teach literacy effectively, regardless of their subject specialism or phase. If you want to make sure that every child leaves your class knowing the rules and how to use them, this is the book for you. If you think that literacy is difficult, or boring, or not your responsibility, be ready to be proved wrong. Discover practical activities, spelling strategies, tips for teaching punctuation and grammar guides that are anything but didactic and dull.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 Barrier: Poor literacy skills amongst teachers (particularly in terms of their understanding of punctuation)
• Solution: Learn the rules of punctuation; teach them to the kids
• 2 Barrier: Teachers not being models of Standard English
• Solution: All teachers to use Standard English as the only language for instruction and to insist that students use it too
• 3 Barrier: Oracy not being taken seriously enough, and the relationships between the versions of literacy not being properly understood
• Solution: Dispense with teacher led discussion and organise talk in more imaginative ways
• 4 Barrier: Not enough extended writing anywhere, ever
• Solution a: Do lots of different varieties of writingDo lots of different varieties of writing
• Solution b: Reintroduce story time in primary schools
• 5 Barrier: Marking not being taken anywhere near seriously enough
• Solution: Use creative approaches to formative assessment and feedback
• 6 Barrier: Well-meaning idiots telling kids that spelling isn’t important
• Solution: Erm, teach them to spell
• 7 Barrier: Teachers’ irrational fear of grammar and lack of understanding that you really don’t need to know much
• Solution: Stop being afraid of things that have no power over you. Learn the pifflingly easy bits of grammar that are necessary to write well, then teach them to the kids
• 8 Barrier: Not enough understanding of why students can be reluctant writers
• Solution: Give them a taste of success
• 9 Barrier: Not enough poetry anywhere, ever
• The final solution: – infect your school with poetry
• The sense of an ending
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright
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