Whole School Approaches to Literacy to Improve Attainment Across the Curriculum

Lisa is leading literacy at a large, all through school. When she began this project, students and staff had very little understanding of the purpose of literacy.

Over two years, she has built a robust cross curricular system that has had an impact on attainment and has been praised by outside inspections.

Lisa will share with you her journey, insights, tools and strategies that have made this project a success.

Episode 1:

Cross-Curricular Reading for Exam Success

This video explores how we can teach reading across the whole curriculum to have more success in examinations. This is a snippet of what is possible when you prioritise disciplinary literacy in all lessons. It asks you to consider the reading skills that can lead your students to success and explores a range of subject area examples of how this could work for you.

Episode 2:

Improving outcomes through cross-curricular literacy

This video gives you a snippet of why cross-curricular literacy is important. What do we need to consider when planning cross-curricular literacy in our lessons, and how could cross-curricular literacy impact your student outcomes?

Episode 3:

The Importance of Oracy

In the UK, oracy is at the top of the education agenda. This is because, in a world of smartphones and technology, communication can often come second to a screen. How and why we should teach our students the power of communication within our subject areas.

Episode 4:

High Expectations for Written Communication Across the Curriculum

This episode is a snippet of what is possible when we all have high expectations of written communication across the curriculum. A little insight into the knowledge types that we should be considering when it comes to literacy and the power of cross-curricular collaboration.

To explore strategic ways of ensuring literacy is a whole school focus.
To explore resources that can improve teacher knowledge of literacy in their subject.
To gain insight into a process for leading literacy that has had proven impact on attainment.

Secondary Leaders
Heads of Faculty
Literacy Co-ordinators

Lisa Jane Ashes

Lisa believes that education is about developing minds for the future. She also believes that many schools fall short of producing a fully rounded end product’ because they fail to coordinate learning across their departments.

She has therefore made it her mission to transform how teachers think about the curriculum so that they can begin to deliver a whole school approach to education. To achieve this, she helps teachers develop personally and professionally by empowering them to collaborate with others within and outside their particular department.

In Lisa’s most recent book, ‘Teacher in the Cupboard,’ she helps teachers examine their approaches to the many problems educators face. Tried and tested solutions to myriad issues are examined from all perspectives. This book provides a mindset to facing problems and is a human approach that can be adopted to solve them.

Lisa’s first book ‘Manglish’, considers how English and Maths can be creatively brought together to improve literacy and numeracy throughout the school, providing practical ideas and strategies for doing this. Lisa is passionate about writing and appears in many teaching and learning publications such as: ‘There Is Another Way and ‘Don’t Change the light bulbs — A Compendium of Expertise from the UK’s most switched-on Educators’.

She has also written many articles to help reflect on her work in education and share her evolving ideas as she goes. Lisa takes her message of curriculum collaboration around the world. Through her work with the charity ‘Reach Out to Schools,’ Lisa has developed teams in Ghana and Nepal where she uses her strategies to help create a culture of continual self-improvement among the country’s teachers.