How explicit teaching and online learning boost literacy levels for high school students

Educators have a lot on their plate. From building lesson plans to providing timely student feedback to progressing through course content, teachers face a number of demands at work. 

However, for secondary school teachers, fundamentals like literacy and numeracy are yet another thing that adds to the educator’s workload. While the standard National Literacy Learning Progressions are set out by the Australian Curriculum, research shows many high school students aren’t meeting these expectations. 

According to a 2023 report by the Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO) and Monash University, a substantial proportion of students start high school with literacy skills three or more years below their peers.  

In fact, the 2023 NAPLAN results show that one in three Australian students cannot read proficiently. The longer literacy challenges go unaddressed, the more likely students are going to be leaving school without the necessary tools to navigate the world around them

With proven teaching strategies (like explicit instruction) and innovative online learning tools, high school teachers will be in the best position to tackle these literacy challenges and help students gain the tailored support they need to succeed, both now and into the future. 

In this guide, we’ll cover:

• The current state of play for literacy levels in Australian high schools
• The power of explicit teaching to boost literacy levels 
• How online learning can tackle literacy challenges
• 3 practical strategies to overcome literacy challenges among high school students

The current state of play for literacy levels in high school 

There is a growing body of evidence suggesting that many students are struggling to meet national literacy proficiency standards. 

By the time students reach high school, educators may assume learners have developed foundational literacy skills, such as reading, writing, comprehension and vocabulary. However, this isn’t always the case. If literacy knowledge gaps are left unchecked, students may struggle to engage with course material and fall further behind from their peers. 

The latest OECD Programme for International Student Assessment found that nearly half (43%) of 15-year-old students in Australia are not proficient in reading. These literacy challenges are amplified by differing socioeconomic backgrounds, with 60% of disadvantaged students not proficient in reading compared to just 25% of their more advantaged peers. 

As a high school educator, there are many factors that compound these literacy challenges, including:

• Navigating a broad spectrum of student abilities: While some students will excel well beyond their year level, others may struggle with basic literacy skills and be unable to engage with course content pitched at their specific year level.
  
• Juggling competing priorities: It can be difficult to make literacy a priority with so much content for teachers to cover in a limited amount of time. ‍
• Ensuring literacy is a whole-school focus: Literacy is often seen as a priority for English departments, but it needs to be addressed as an all-teacher issue, with literacy skills needed across almost every subject area. 

Literacy isn’t just a focus area for the English department: it’s an every-teacher priority. Each department will have its own literacy requirements for students. For example, science is a very lexically dense subject, and there are a lot of terminology students will only come across in this context. Science educators will need to unpack this vocabulary with students and teach learners how to write and read like a scientist.
- Sarah-Eleni Zaferis, Resident teacher and Product Enablement Specialist at Atomi

The power of explicit teaching to boost literacy levels

There is a strong body of evidence that supports the use of explicit teaching when learning concepts. However, studies are also showing the benefits of explicit instruction for boosting foundational skills like literacy and numeracy. 

Research has found that explicit instruction offers clear benefits for improving student’s vocabulary, fluency and comprehension outcomes. Plus, explicit teaching has been shown to improve writing skills, particularly when students are modelled how to plan, write and edit texts.

As Sarah-Eleni explains:

For high school students, explicit teaching removes ambiguity. The student can clearly see what success looks like and the path to get there. For teachers, explicit instruction offers clear strategies to follow, which ensures students reach mastery before they move on.

How online learning can tackle literacy challenges head-on

When explicit instruction is delivered through online learning platforms, students are able to access the personalised support and feedback they need to bridge knowledge gaps and master new skills with confidence. 

In practical terms, online learning is a powerful tool for tackling learning challenges as it: 

• Identifies student abilities at speed and scale with continuous reporting features that give educators a snapshot of classwide literacy levels and detailed insights into how individual students are tracking. 
  
• Enables differentiation by making it easy for educators to provide learning material in formats that are most helpful to individual students.  
• Offers tailored, meaningful resources in a discreet way, allowing students to practice and master literacy skills in their own time from a personalised learning portal.  

3 practical tips to overcome literacy challenges among high school students

Ready to take action? Discover three tangible ways you can harness online learning and explicit teaching in your classroom to boost the literacy skills of your high school students.

Tip 1. Leverage tech to implement a reciprocal reading strategy 

Reciprocal teaching is a powerful way to build literacy skills for high school students. With online learning platforms, students can execute this reading strategy by reading online texts or watching videos, discussing texts in a structured way and gaining valuable comprehension skills along the way. 

This strategy uses scaffolded discussions about texts to build four key comprehension skills: predicting, clarifying, questioning, and summarising. 

One of the best ways to bring this technique into your classroom is to use the explicit teaching technique of modelling. This means the educator would verbally walk students through the reciprocal reading process, ensuring students have mastered this process before breaking into small groups to collaboratively talk and think through texts. 

Throughout this process, digital whiteboards and online copies of texts can be used to allow students to discuss and extract meaning from texts to build comprehension and literacy skills.  

Tip 2. Offer differentiated resources tailored to student’s literacy needs 

Older students want to fit in and can be nervous to acknowledge that they are facing literacy challenges for fear of being treated differently from their peers. 

This makes online learning platforms a perfect fit for addressing differing literacy needs. With instructional videos that break down key literacy concepts or provide additional opportunities to test their skills and gain instant feedback, learners can gain the personalised resources they need from the comfort of their own devices. 

Online learning allows teachers to reach students individually by differentiating without drawing attention from classmates. That could involve additional classroom interventions where students can access online tools to offer extra literacy support or even assigning students homework that’s relevant to a student’s literacy needs.‍
‍- Sarah-Eleni Zaferis, Resident teacher and Product Enablement Specialist at Atomi

Tip 3. Make data-driven decisions about how to best support students

A 2022 survey of 400 Australian secondary teachers found that nearly a quarter of teachers did not or only sometimes identified when a student was struggling and needed extra support. 

However, with online learning platforms, teachers can gain the data they need to track student progress in real-time to ensure learners gain the support they need when they need it. 

For example, at Atomi, our continuous reporting tool mark book gives you instant visibility over which students have been completing their assigned tasks with the ability to collect, analyse and make targeted interventions. 

Atomi Tip: Assign post-class revision tasks in Atomi to allow students to apply their new literacy skills independently in their own time. Not only will students gain instant feedback, but you’ll be able to review these results and follow up with tailored resources to support their progress. 

Download your free bundle of explicit teaching resources 

Ready to take action and experiment with explicit teaching in your own classroom? Our bundle of free explicit teaching resources are designed to give you the practical tips, guidelines and frameworks to leverage this high-impact teaching strategy with confidence. Download now.

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