12 September 1997

Suddenly, literacy projects are the new panacea. Maureen O'Connor offers a guide to some of the schemes which have made an impact nationally and locally

In one sense at least the new Government's literacy programme has already been an enormous success. Notions such as the "literacy hour", classes for parents, summer literacy schools and pressure to encourage parents to read to their children for 20 minutes a day have guaranteed headlines in newspapers from tabloid to broadsheet. Suddenly, raising children's performance in reading and writing has become a national objective that should be boosted by the National Year of Reading in 1998/99.

From the experts' point of view , the issue is complex. As the National Literacy Trust's book, Building a Literate Nation, put it in July: "Literacy is a multi-faceted subject that demands the attention of practitioners and thinkers with very different perspectives. It is not, therefore, surprising that there is no common agenda for building a literate nation over the next five years."

What emerged from the book is a recognition that building literacy requires co-operation between education, business and industry, the community and the family. For teachers, the immediate issue is a practical one. They are the ones who have to meet David Blunkett's ambitious target for all 11-year-olds to reach their chronological reading age when the national curriculum test results are published in 2006. To do that they need to find proven methods that will work for their children in their classrooms in their communities.

Since literacy became a front-page issue, there has been an explosion of schemes to raise standards. Some have proved more controversial than others. This guide to literacy schemes and projects is not definitive. Nor can it be qualitative; The National Literacy Trust has 1,800 initiatives on its database.

Over the next three pages we offer a guide to a range of schemes, both classroom-based and those that aim to work with families and the community, so that teachers can see what is available. They can decide what best suits their circumstances and then make contact with experts who can offer more information and advice.

The National Literacy Project
This is the project launched under the Conservative government last year which has already piloted the "literacy hour", now endorsed by the Labour Government's Literacy Task Force. The project has already introduced its ideas to 300 primary schools and will be extended next year. Its approach involves setting targets for children from the reception class through to Year 6. The approach is unashamedly pedagogical, which sometimes brings it into conflict with heads and educationists who say that teachers do not need this level of prescription. But the national director, John Stannard, says that, in the pilot schools, prescription has not been an issue. The project has shifted teachers' thinking towards their pedagogy and they have tended to ask for more help rather than less.

The project's approach is partly based on classroom programmes developed in New Zealand by Dame Marie Clay and others. The approach is structured, involving both whole-class and group teaching, and tackles language at the level of text, sentences and individual words. Vocabulary extension, word play and grammar, phonics and spelling are all included, and there are sessions using the techniques of shared and guided reading. There is to be a national strategy for training and it is anticipated that every school will be enabled to take part in the project during the National Year of Reading in 1998/9. * The National Project for Literacy and Numeracy, National Centre, London House, 59-65 London Road, Reading, Berkshire RG1 4EW.Tel: 0118 952 7500......

THRASS
The acronym stands for Teaching Handwriting, Reading and Spelling Skills. It is a highly structured scheme for teaching the connections between sound and letter patterns based on identification of the 44 phonemes (sounds that letters represent, such as f or k) and the alternative graphemes (combinations of letters, such as ph or ch) which can be used to write them.

The terminology is made explicit from the start and the aim is to ensure that children are not confused by being told one thing and then finding in their reading something different: a-pple, w-a-ter, a-che, for instance. The scheme makes use of tapes and charts and also teaches regular letter formation leading to cursive script. Detailed work on the effectiveness of THRASS is under way.

THRASS, by Alan Davies and Denyse Ritchie, a Primary Special Needs Pack, is published by Collins Educational, £70 Tel:…..

Back to TOP

TES Index
Next Reference