At LEO Academy Trust, we wanted to ensure our pupils were thinking, speaking and writing like experts (disciplinary literacy).

Drawing on the EEF’s 2024 Implementation Guidance, here is how we moved disciplinary literacy from a research-informed theory into a sustained classroom reality across our primary schools.

Explore

Effective implementation begins by exploring the practice and defining the actions. During my school improvement visits, I noticed high-quality learning across the curriculum, but the volume of writing across the curriculum was virtually non-existent or an extension of English lessons, e.g. diaries in history lessons. I also noticed that pupils were very good at knowing key facts, dates and timelines (or substantive knowledge) but the disciplinary knowledge (or subject specific knowledge) needed enhancing. Therefore, I wanted to improve these opportunities for pupils by ensuring that writing in history, geography, and science was as rigorous as it is in English.

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