Literacy Tutoring
The literacy tutoring after school has begun on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, with students choosing one day or the other. Literacy tutoring is designed to build the skills of students in reading and writing to ensure that they are more confident and independent learners in the classroom. Students do not read anymore. While some would say that is an exaggeration, they certainly do not read the amount that they should. In fact, most students read below grade level. Some are only just below, others are years below. The strategies offered at tutoring will help to bridge that gap and allow students the opportunity to actively engage with the text. The importance of this is evident when students enter years 11 and 12. The Board of Studies offers texts for a High School Certificate reading level; therefore, students who do not have the strategies to decipher the text will struggle, adding more stress to a stressful time.
WHY DO STUDENTS NEED TUTORING?
All students can read the words, which is why it may come as a surprise when students are selected for tutoring. Students will assume it is because they have ‘failed’ something, and parents will be mystified because their child can read and write, so why would tutoring be necessary? The short answer is that literacy is more than reading and writing. It is being able to understand all that a text offers, and whilst students are at school, texts offer a lot more. Long ago, I read a long forgotten analysis of English as a subject: “English is teachers seeing far more in a text than the author ever intended”. And that may be true of English. But literacy is not ‘English’. It is understanding, comprehending, interpreting, predicting, analysing, evaluating, recreating and conveying for a defined purpose. These skills are not ‘English’ skills; they are science, mathematics, history, legal, technology and sporting skills. How many times a day are you asked to interpret and understand the world around you through verbal, written and visual clues? This is literacy. The students who are selected have not ‘failed’. They are students who could benefit from the free support offered to become more independent literacy thinkers. They are students who deserve more from their effort than ‘grades’ may show. They are students whose potential can be increased by simply making literacy skills more explicit.
THE GOAL OF OUR TUTORING PROGRAMME.
The tutoring programme uses a series of texts from all subject areas to develop those literacy skills that cross boundaries. Students will read and actively engage with non-fiction and fiction texts. The skills we are developing include: identifying the main idea of a text, passage or paragraph; identifying the text structures that are most common in the world; developing knowledge about topics students may have limited experience in; and actively identifying key language conventions of texts and recreating them in written form. These skills can be taken into the classroom immediately and applied in any class, at any time. Yesterday, I asked the students what was one thing they would take away from the session that they would use in the classroom. Each student had a response that showed they could now begin the process of thinking about texts differently. Knowing how to read the text is only a small part of the literacy knowledge required in the 21st Century.
WHERE TO NEXT?
Students selected for free tutoring have begun attending on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons. Once the numbers settle down and we have a consistent base of students we will offer spare positions to other students who could benefit. Many are not able to attend for various reasons and this creates opportunities for others. Being selected is not the ‘dark chasm of despair’ that students go to when they are chosen. It is the moment to make a choice for learning, to exit Plato’s cavern and find enlightenment. So, if you have been selected but not yet attended, we hope you will grasp this opportunity next week, and if you should be contacted in the next two weeks to join, please be open to the possibilities.
Should you have any enquiries about tutoring in either Literacy or Numeracy, feel free to contact Mrs De Guzman, Mr Dewar or Ms Hicks. We look forward to seeing the students each week.
Duncan Dewar
Leader of Learning Literacy