Bryn Hafren Comprehensive School

Bryn Hafren
Comprehensive School
Triple Literacy Project:
Languages and English Faculties

Amy Walters-Bresner
Head of Languages Faculty
Lois Banks
Head of KS4 English
Following from CILT Cymru discussing triple literacy issues, we will be
showing you the strategies we have developed at a whole-school level
to raise both the profile and standards of literacy.
We approached the development of these triple strategies together,
through an INSET with all team members of both the English and
Language faculties. As a result, no one strategy was developed in
isolation. This whole faculty approach with English and Languages has
resulted in the pupils being exposed to these new strategies repeatedly,
consequently pupil progress has been rapid and the strategies have
been embedded into our teaching and learning much more readily.

The idea is based on a Facebook profile
page, where everybody can post
messages to each other and share
ideas. These word walls are constantly
updated in class, in a similar way to
how pupils update their Facebook
pages.
Pupils and teachers are able to ‘post’
ideas on to Wallbook, and then ‘share’
it by writing it in their profile page in
their booklets.
It allows pupils in all Key Stages, to
share new, unique and interesting
vocabulary, which helps to extend their
work.

This activity was designed to help
pupils improve their dictionary
skills, which impacts across all
subjects whole-school.
All teachers in both faculties
discussed how pupils may know
how to find a word in a dictionary,
but were often unsure of types of
words and abbreviations, resulting
in pupils selecting incorrect
vocabulary.
The video shows how we use this
activity to help pupils understand
these abbreviations and how they
can use dictionaries to extend
their writing.

Introducing new
vocabulary
When introducing new topic vocabulary, we
often use our other languages to help pupils
guess the vocabulary. Pupils are able to
discuss sounds, patterns in spelling and
pronunciation.
We find that pupils become more
independent and are able to recall more
vocabulary as a result of these activities.
Pupils realise how the knowledge of one
language can help with another and have
gained invaluable transferable language skills.

In both faculties, we always encourage
pupils to extend their work with a variety
of tenses, opinion, reasons and
connectives.
We have a whole-school strategy known
as VCOP, whereby each department has
sheets to help pupils with extended
writing. It also shows pupils that they can
transfer connectives and sentence
openers, from one subject to another.
In English and Languages, we thought of a new
idea known as a ski slope, with the slogan “how
low can you go?”. The idea is that pupils take a
basic phrase and see how far they can extend it.

This strategy was taken from an
INSET attended by team
members.
Each language decided on 9 key
phrases that pupils could adapt
to any topic. As a result, pupils
are able to speak about any topic
and are able to construct
paragraphs solely by learning a
few new words of a topic. By
including a range of tenses in the
Awesome 9, pupils use a range of
tenses in their work far more
readily than before. It has also
helped with their confidence
when extending work.
The Awesome 9 phrases do not
change, which helps pupils
become more confident.