The National Literacy Strategy

Book excerpt: This document details the National Literacy Strategy, a framework for primary school teachers in England helping their students master basic literacy skills in order to reach national literacy standards. This framework sets out teaching objectives from Reception to Year 6 to enable students to become fully literate. The framework is intended for daily reference by classroom teachers to ensure that they have appropriately high expectations for their students, understand how students will progress through primary school, and offer a balance between reading and writing and different kinds of texts. The framework is presented in three sections. Section 1 defines the components of literacy, details the structure of the framework, describes the teaching methods used to teach literacy during the "Literacy Hour," and discusses how medium- and short-term planning emerge from the framework. Section 2 delineates the teaching objectives for word level work (phonics, spelling, vocabulary), sentence level work (grammar, punctuation), and text level work (comprehension, composition) over each term during primary school. Section 3 is comprised of appendices containing planning sheets, a list of high frequency "sight recognition" words for Years Reception-2, a list of medium frequency words to be taught in Years 4 and 5, a summary of specific phonics and spelling work to be covered in Years Reception-2, a summary of the range of work for each term, a technical vocabulary list, and a glossary of terms used in the framework. (KB)