High reliability Literacy Teaching Procedures: A means of fostering literacy learning across the curriculum. John Munro Adapted By Maria Rigopoulos

Students in late primary and secondary levels are required to learn by reading expository texts. Also, There is an increased focus on self managed and directed learning There is the need to access a range of information sources.

Students who have difficulty converting written information to knowledge are severely disadvantaged. They:- Are less able to access information. Have less opportunity to display what they know in written ways They are less able to align what they know about a topic on related written text on subsequent occasions.

Subject teachers are aware that successful learning in their subject requires students to read and to learn from this. They recognise literacy as an essential vehicle for learning in their subject.

John Munro worked with teachers in three secondary colleges to develop an approach to literacy enhancement that targets these problems

He developed 7 literacy teaching procedures called High Reliability Literacy Teaching Procedures (HRLTPs)

The procedures needed to meet a number of criteria: Enhance Be included intheBe implemented Comprehensionregular teachingon a whole school programbasis

The 7 High Reliability Literacy Procedures 1.Get knowledge ready – by organising and recoding what students know about a topic in verbal form. Many students have difficulty learning to read because they have difficulty linking what they know with the text or others don’t have adequate basic text structures like compare-contrast, cause and effect. So, before reading, readers have to be assisted to re-code non-verbal knowledge into a verbal form.

We can get students knowledge ready by: stimulating students existing knowledge by visualising what they know about the topic organising what students know about a topic to a verbal linguistic form. mv Showing students a picture, a model or a demonstration and asking them to interpret it Talking about pictures in a text – saying what the picture shows Describing in sentences pictorial information that accompanies text students will read. mv Suggesting key questions about a key picture in a text. mv

2. Learn 5 – 10 unfamiliar verbal concepts that relate to the content to be covered in the lesson Many students cannot read words accurately or automatically. They also have corresponding difficulties with spelling. When students learn the key concepts explicitly they are more likely to understand the topic being read in class. There are various procedures teachers can use to do this, have students: Pronounce, read and spell the key words in the text accurately Teaching word meanings directly Teaching students how to work out the meanings of unfamiliar words they encounter in texts Developing students meaning making motors – building up a repertoire of key vocabulary units.

Scanning a text - students articulating what the scan action means Select unfamiliar words, talk about their meanings and suggest synonyms for those words Students suggesting reasons for doing a vocabulary activity and the value it has for their learning. olearn5.wmv Using key words in sentences and suggesting synonyms for the key words used olearn6.wmv Brainstorm and suggest words that might be mentioned in a text. olearn7.wmv Spelling key words in a text acytolearn8.wmv acytolearn8.wmv

3. Read aloud short portions of relevant text This is a key literacy teaching procedure which provides students with auditory feedback for the text read. As well, it can help students retain sentences in short term memory and to use their oral language to reason about hat they read.

5. Make and say questions that each sentence in the text answers This procedure focuses student attention on analysing the ideas in the sentence in terms of its purpose and to link the sentence with what they know. It extends their comprehension of the sentence and encourages them to be active readers By: Suggesting questions a text might answer Reading and paraphrasing questions that could be asked about a text Using questions to help organise knowledge gained from a text whist reading

6.Summarise the text. Summarising is the key aspect of reading. It helps readers abstract the main ideas of a text. This is the knowledge they add to what they already know.

4. Paraphrase each sentence in the text Paraphrasing a sentence is one aspect of sentence comprehension. It gives students the opportunity to learn to link the new concepts, often in unfamiliar relationships and to talk about the new ideas. It also helps readers to link the new ideas with what they know. It teaches them ways of talking about the ideas in the topic area and helps them retain the related ideas in short term memory. eracytolearn2b.wmv

7. Review and consolidate what has been read by reading silently a summary text. Students identify what they have learnt by reading and linking the new knowledge with what they already know. The new knowledge is structured in a ‘linguistic’ of ‘verbal way’ which can be used in subsequent reading and writing activities wmv

The goals which are targeted explicitly through this process are: a.Students learn to build their personal set of reading comprehension strategies that they can use spontaneously and selectively. b.Students improve knowledge of spelling and letter patterns, of sentence and paragraph structures and of networks of concepts