The single most important purpose of education is to equip all students with the literacy and numeracy skills for lifelong learning. A century ago that meant teaching the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Today it means much more. Schools are called upon to prepare students with the knowledge and higher-order thinking skills they will need to solve increasingly complex problems and make decisions in a richly diverse, information-driven society. Literacy is the means to that end.

Students who acquire the foundational skills for literacy in their early school years are well launched for later learning and a rewarding future. However, early success in literacy is no “vaccination” against difficulties in the middle and senior school years, when the requirements for learning are vastly different and more complex.  All students need ongoing instruction and support throughout adolescence to sustain their growth in literacy.

Students in Grades 7 to 12 need well-developed literacy skills to succeed in all subject areas, and all subjects provide opportunities to develop those skills. In math, for example, students learn to identify the main idea in a word problem and use key words to determine what operation to use; in geography they construct and interpret maps, draw meaning from symbols, and make notes; in science and technology they build subject-specific vocabulary and interpret diagrams, charts, procedures, and safety information, and write lab reports. All subjects require students to connect with and build on their prior knowledge and experience – which is a key strategy for reading. All subjects also require
students to communicate what they have learned, orally and in writing.

Literacy involves reading, writing, and oral communication.  Critical thinking and affective (feeling) skills are common threads that run through all of these aspects of literacy, especially in the later grades. As the content becomes more complex, the literate learner relies more heavily on these higher-level skills to make meaning.

“The most powerful feature of schools, in terms of developing children as readers and writers, is the quality of classroom instruction. Effective schools are simply schools where there are more classrooms where high-quality reading and writing instruction is regularly available. No school with mediocre classroom instruction ever became effective just by adding a high-quality remedial or resource room program.” (Allington (2001), p. 111.)

Literacy and learning are not school issues alone: they are family and community issues as well. Public education is rooted in the conviction that schools, families, and communities are partners in support of student achievement. It can be hard work to make substantial connections, but literacy – a tool that builds and sustains communities – can provide the focus for actions that lead to genuine improvements in student learning.

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(Source: Think Literacy Success, Grades 7-12, October 2003)