A young person has literacy difficulties when they struggle with reading, writing, communicating ideas and listening to understand and work with information. Some may be good readers but find processing the information they read challenging. Others may be good communicators with no word finding difficulties but might have poor auditory processing so process spoken language at a different pace than others. Young people may find one or all these skills difficult, no matter how hard they try.
PHS will investigate literacy difficulties so we can help to identify these and recommend appropriate supports and strategies to improve the learning experience of the young person. Information on literacy difficulties identified in primary school is shared with PHS staff before young people transition to S1.
The process of investigating literacy difficulties is called profiling.
- Concerns about a young person’s literacy are raised by a parent/carer/teacher/young person and a referral is submitted to the relevant House link within the SFL/Literacy profiling team
- Investigation into the learner’s potential literacy difficulties begins. Evidence is gathered from class teachers (pieces of work, assessments, photocopies of jotters, screenshots etc), learner and parent/carer checklists. Previous information and evidence from primary school is also included in this investigation (if a young person has a pupil card in primary school, this will be used at PHS as a Ready to Learn (R2L) plan)
- Where appropriate, diagnostic tools and assessments are utilised to help gather further literacy evidence. These can involve standardised tests to identify difficulties and highlight differences between a young person’s actual and expected literacy and reading levels eg. LASS, YARC, single word spelling assessments etc
- A thorough literacy team review of all literacy evidence from class teachers, learner and parent/carer checklists and diagnostic tools and assessments takes place
- A literacy profile report is completed. Results and strategies to support will then be shared with the learner, class teachers and parent/carer