Background

St Joseph’s were keen to improve learner outcomes in all areas of literacy, in particular for those impacted by poverty. In addition to interventions for targeted groups of children, the school recognised the need to enhance the quality of teaching and learning in the classroom in responding to high levels of deprivation. The school chose to pay a full time principal teacher (PT) to lead the strategic vision to reduce the poverty-related attainment gap with a focus in literacy, initially writing.

Changing the culture

Working alongside the SMT, the PT supported a change in culture which promoted and sustained high-quality curriculum practices (including pedagogy and assessment). She led individual and collegial activities, to enable a collegial culture of mutual respect and trust where all staff participated meaningfully in decisions related to the development of writing. An annual plan was created with clear outcomes and measures and a term plan with targets. The plan was monitored throughout the year and adaptions made as necessary.

The writing curriculum

The PT contributed to designing and building the writing curriculum. She encouraged staff to engage critically with research and developments in literacy and equity, working collaboratively with others to ensure this learning was creatively applied to improve outcomes for all learners, in particular those impacted by poverty. As writing was initially identified as an area for development based on data, parents, staff feedback and staff confidence levels, the school used research from the Education Endowment Foundation, Education Scotland and John Hattie to create their ‘Key Principles of Writing’ framework. The PT engaged colleagues to meaningfully participate in decisions related to the development and planning of learning opportunities. It was decided that different genres would be taught across the school at the same time to build confidence, facilitate moderation and increase collaborative working across the stages.

Enhancing pedagogy

The PT supported teachers to develop processes to systematically gather, analyse and make effective use of assessment feedback and learners’ progress data to evaluate, inform and plan future learning which met the learners’ needs. A problem solving approach was taken to look at what was preventing pupils from attaining in writing. Coaching and modelling sessions were delivered to all staff. Working with both teachers and support staff over a series of sessions, steadily withdrawing scaffolded support until they were teaching independently and confidently. Moderation of writing was targeted within the school's annual moderation calendar to reflect the new pedagogical approaches taken. This resulted in improvements to the assessment of writing. In addition to formative assessment, three assessment periods in the year were agreed where teachers assessed writing holistically using Inverclyde Assessment Criteria. These focussed on application and depth of learning. With their teacher, each child agreed core targets that they would work on across the curriculum and were able to discuss their targets and what they need to do to improve. Senior leaders in the school also discussed writing with pupils in a positive and encouraging manner. This enhanced the ethos and culture throughout school to support a literacy rich environment where pupils enjoy writing and are enthusiastic about it.

Providing targeted support

In addition to supporting the development of pedagogy, the principal teacher also was responsible for interventions for individuals and groups of learners through team teaching approaches and through the upskilling of pupil support assistants. Learners requiring recovery support were identified through tracking meetings and professional dialogue with teachers. Interventions were put in place were monitored and adapted to ensure impact on pupil attainment in writing. Successful interventions included:

• Finger gym for the actual mechanics of writing.
• Synthetic Phonics groups for spelling - focussing on alphabetic code chart.
• Sentence level groups - looking at how to write a sentence with capital letters and full stops, building up to using openers and connectives effectively.
• Paragraph groups - focussing on punctuation (this was for children who could write well and use good vocabulary, etc. but who consistently needed support with punctuation).
• Uplevelling groups and individuals - focussing on adding high level connectives/openers/punctuation/vocab into their writing (this was an upper school intervention aimed at pupils who could write in sentences and paragraphs, but their writing need uplevelled).

The impact of the intervention

The impact has been two fold:

1. Increased attainment for all and reduction in the poverty-related attainment gap.
2. Enhanced pedagogy with teaching and support staff reporting that they are more confident in the teaching of writing and this is reflected during classroom monitoring.

Videos

Next steps

Owing to the success of the programme, the school will continue to fund a PT of literacy for one more year, with a focus on reading.

Improvement questions

• How will your PEF spend have a lasting impact?
• How do you maximise the support you have in school to impact positive learners outcomes?
• How do pedagogical improvements in your school support equity?
• How do you collaborate to share ownership of meeting pupil’s needs?