From little things big things grow: enhancing literacy learning for secondary students in rural and regional Australia

Overall, the educational achievement of rural and regional students is lower than that of students elsewhere. To address uneven student achievement, a regional NSW high school, in collaboration with the local university, adopted a whole school approach to literacy teaching and learning. The literacy pedagogy adopted by the school has been applied to meet the specific literacy demands of each learning area. How teachers implementing the pedagogy have been supported by a school-university partnership is documented in this paper. A key outcome of the professional learning is that teachers in years 7 and 8 are expected to develop a language shared with colleagues and students for talking about the literacy demands of the learning areas so literacy knowledge and skills gained in one learning area can be applied in other learning areas.