Developing literacy strategies with Read&Write at Oswestry School

Read&Write helps develop literacy strategies in Oswestry School

Oswestry School is an independent day and boarding school in Shropshire, England. The school motto is “Non scholae, sed vitae discimus”, which is Latin for “We learn not for school but for life”.

This non-selective school caters for students with a wide range of abilities between the ages of four and 18. There is a strong focus within Oswestry on developing literacy strategies, as these underpin all other areas of the curriculum. In doing this the school enables students of all abilities to perform to the highest level across a broad range of subjects.

The leadership team within Oswestry wanted to find a resource that could be universally used by all students, not just those with specific learning needs, to improve their reading, writing and oracy skills. Following a successful trial of Read&Write, the software was implemented and has since become embedded in the whole-school learning approach. Students are confident in their use of the software during lessons, as well as when completing individual assignments at home.

The versatility of the software was a contributing factor in the purchase decision. Read&Write is introduced to younger students in the Oswestry prep department so that by the time they move into secondary school they are using it as part and parcel of their everyday work and have a comprehensive understanding of how it fulfills their individual needs, regardless of how complex or refined they are.  The school recognised that this generation of students are comfortable using a wide range of technology from a young age in their everyday lives, so normalising it within their academic lives was a natural progression.

Claire Belk, Head of Learning Support at Oswestry School, has seen first hand the positive impact Read&Write has on students’ learning :

“Straightaway students could see how they could engage with the text, how it made it easy, and it was really good to see their ability”

What the pupils think

Year 11 student Lucy uses Read&Write to help with researching

“When researching you can highlight sections in different colours and then you can put these highlights into one document, which is really quite helpful.  So it means you’re not having to do four lots of reading, you’re only doing one set of reading and picking out the information as you go, which cuts down on time.”

Read&Write helps Ben, Year 7, to work independently

“I use Read&Write, which helps me a lot in lessons and especially when I’m doing homework. At home, I don’t have a teacher who understands the subject on hand to help.”

Daniel, Year 8, notes how easy it is to use the Dictionary tool

“You can just press on the one word and then that goes into Google, so it comes up with a page on that word.  So, say, you’ve got ‘volcano’, you can just click on ‘volcano’ and then it searches the word volcano and then it comes up with lots of things.”