Literacy and Learning

Teaching Literacy in all Learning Areas

Alison Sanza

Literacy Leader

Literacy is the ability to interpret and create texts with appropriateness, accuracy, confidence, fluency and efficacy for learning in and out of school, and for participating in Australian life more generally. ​                                         (VCAA 2016)​

Literacy and language are fundamental to learning across all Learning areas.  The content of a lesson is what is taught,but ultimately the aim of a lesson is to ensure that students can  think about, write about, read about, and talk about the content that is presented to them. The ultimate goal of literacy instruction is to build a student’s comprehension, writing skills, and overall skills in communication, no matter what content they are learning.

To get the most from their learning experiences, students need to understand both the general and the specific terminology that is used across their lessons, and how to respond in accordance with the terminology used. Language and terminology can mean different things depending on the scenario , so it is important that students can learn the academic language that is used in their various studies, its meaning, and how it is applied.

Professional Learning

Recent staff professional learning targeted strategies for equipping students with the Academic (Content) Literacy and Subject Specific (Disciplinary Based) Literacy that students need in order to engage effectively with their learning experiences.​ 

Tier 1 words

As students move from primary school to secondary school they bring a fundamental vocabulary of Tier 1 words - such as dog, go, happy, play. These words do not need to be explicitly taught; they are encountered in everyday conversation.

Tier 2 Words

As students enter secondary school year levels,  they need to begin to grow their vocabulary, and in turn this increases their comprehension of information held in written, aural, or visual form. Students are increasingly exposed to words that are needed in an academic context; words that provide access to more complex topics and discussions outside of the everyday. 

 These are used across multiple topic and subject areas and include words such as assess, compare​, anaylse​, categorise, formulate, propose​, and suggest. Tier 2 vocabulary also includes words such as atmosphere and tension.

While students may know these words in an everyday context, they need to learn how they are applied in the academic context in order to increase their comprehension of learning resources and instruction.  

It is also important that students understand the specific meanings of theses words in relation to individual subjects and topics.  For example, the word atmosphere can be used in English lessons to express the mood in a scene - "The tense atmosphere in this scene is juxtaposed with the calm mood of the previous one."  But in geography, it describes the gases enveloping the earth - "The first layer of the atmosphere closest to the earth's surface is the called the troposphere."

Teachers explicitly teach these words, to ensure they can develop their students' understanding and expression of complex ideas. These words are useful for multiple purposes, and their use and understanding reflect and mature understanding of academic language in each subject. Students are expected to use Tier 2 words in multiple contexts and for multiple purposes. ​

Tier 3 words

Tier 3 words are relevant for specific subjects or content-areas and are words that have distinct meanings and purposes, relevant to a specialised topic or discourse. Examples of these include lava, legislature, circumference , aorta , sonata, Isosceles​, oxymoron​ and post-modernism.  Students learn these words for the particular subject areas, and should be encouraged to use them in the context of the specific subject matter wherever they are useful. This equips them to speak, read, write and think like scientists, or historians or mathematicians or students of music etc...

Continuing a common literacy strategy, staff focus their attention according to the following outline. This enables students to engage with Tier 2 and Tier 3 vocabulary and to identify how, where and when to use it.​

During the professional learning session, teachers created lists of Tier 2 & Tier 3 words associated with specific year levels and subjects.  These will be used to inform their teaching.  Going forward, teachers will continue to work collaboratively and consistently to implement the strategies above in order to teach and embed academic vocabulary across all learning areas.