Small Steps: How Correction Codes Can Promote Literacy Across the Curriculum

In this post, we look at ways to improve attainment – and how Conduit resources can help.

One key policy in the National Improvement Framework and Improvement Plan for 2022 encourages advances in attainment, particularly in literacy and numeracy. With so much need for equity and learners and educators alike reeling from the health, social, and educational impacts of COVID-19, something as simple as establishing a correction code could pave the path for improving attainment across the school.

If you think about it, a correction code is the first step in deploying literacy across the curriculum. Staff from other departments would not need to carry out any additional or onerous work, but could simply use the correction code in line with their own marking and feedback. Applying a code approved by your school’s English department would support a consistent approach to literacy and promote these skills across the curriculum if displayed in various subject classrooms and referred to in feedback.

Of course, some departments may wish to ‘tweak’ their code – which is why we made our resource editable – but we hope it is generic enough for most subjects to tackle the most common literacy issues. This could be followed up with a quiz on the different types of mistakes made in literacy and a snapshot of results taken. To further consolidate understanding, teacher could use our Potato Punctuation resource to recap key punctuation and its uses.

With continued (and shared) marking feedback, especially in subjects where tasks and mistakes in grammar and spelling are similar; further snapshots could be taken and evidence could be established of learner attainment.

Why Interdisciplinary Teaching Matters

Many subjects ask learners to show their literacy by responding in a variety of text types, such as leaflets, newspaper reports and letters. Jenny Reeves and Alison Fox state in Practice-Based Learning: Developing Excellence in Teaching that “interdisciplinary teaching provides a meaningful way in which students can use knowledge learned in one context as a knowledge base in other contexts in and out of school.”

Having an exemplar, a checklist and a self assessment that links to Curriculum for Excellence’s Experiences and Outcomes would ensure learners know their level throughout the curriculum and in every subject they attend. Teachers could moderate and cross-mark these responses in order to ensure consistency and not reinvent the wheel when it comes to creating exemplars of work.

This literacy project was taken on by one teacher in the Conduit team as part of their Professional Enquiry for the GTCS Professional Update and their results were encouraging. After an initial snapshot, posters displaying the correction code were placed in every subject classroom and a month later a further snapshot was taken. Learner interviews quickly established that they found the codes and the marking feedback useful, with positive mentions for the writing frames and assessment rubric posters. At the end of the term, 75% of the first-year cohort achieved their literacy target, improving by 5% from the term before.

Other Resources to Promote Cross Curricular Learning

At Conduit, we aim to support the various pathways through secondary learning whilst allowing educators to modify resources to suit their students' needs. The correction code quizzes are available on Conduit for our users to download, tweak (if they need to) and implement in their own Literacy projects. Our writing templates, such as this resource on writing a diary or this resource focusing on leaflets, provide learners with a clear model for writing certain text types across subjects, ensure consistency and provide opportunities for cross-marking and moderation events.

We challenge the questionable assumption that each faculty is unable to share moderation with other subjects. Our resources allow meaningful progress for all and for our learners to see the holistic nature of teaching to benefit their understanding and application. We are, as the saying goes, all in this together. One step at a time.