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TEACHING
45 Minutes
Multi-track
The Psychology
The Group
COURSES
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TRACKS TEACHERS
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REFERRALS
THE TRACKS STORY
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Multi-track Teaching
Tracks Literacy is uniquely a multi-track programme. Each track is a separate way of teaching literacy and each track is structured and cumulative. Tracks are taught in parallel. The analogy of a jigsaw is used to describe the interaction of the
tracks, and the development of literacy. The completed jigsaw represents the knowledge and skill
to which the good reader and speller has access.
The Jigsaw
The tracks represent lines of interlocking jigsaw pieces. Each track has a next piece that is easily identified and obvious to place. The pupil is directly acquiring skills. As pieces are added, they give increasing information about the whole picture. The pupil is laying foundations for learning.
As a jigsaw progresses the task becomes easier. The same is true of the acquisition of literacy
skills within Tracks. Pupils are more likely to make connections for themselves, as do pupils
without special needs. 'Next pieces' increasingly require almost no time to identify and place.
Pupils 'just know it'.
Given that the same material appears in different tracks, the pupil is increasingly likely
to encounter whole sections of the jigsaw that they know, or partially know. This provides
reinforcement, fills in any gaps and leads to spurts in development.
The analogy of a jigsaw then needs to be replaced with a more sophisticated one -
that of a computer-generated jigsaw with an auto-completion facility for different sections
of the jigsaw, or indeed the complete jigsaw.
The aim of direct, interactive teaching within Tracks Literacy is to trigger these developmental
processes. The teacher's responsibility is to lay foundations for such change, to recognise
when it occurs and to move with it. When these changes don't occur, the teacher simply continues placing individual jigsaw pieces, but importantly without losing sight of the possibilities that exist.
An Example
In Do it Yourself Writing, Sam mis-spells the word 'earth', so he is given it as part of the Write Words Track. At succeeding sessions he is introduced to 'earn', 'search'
and 'early' through the Write Words Informal System.
Sam meets the word 'heard' when decoding words in the Read Words Track. He consults a reference list and rejects the 'ear' option because this doesn't make a word that he understands. He similarly rejects 'air'. He chooses 'er' and reads 'heard' correctly.
A few words later he meets 'earth'. He starts to check the list and then realises that it could be 'er' again, and then, that there is a connection with his Write Words. He reads the word without using the reference.
In the DIY Reading session Sam is likely to 'just read' or decode any words with 'ear' without teacher involvement. Since the tracks are cumulative systems, Sam is unlikely to forget these options. When he meets them as spelling options in Chunks he will at the minimum, have a foundation to support faster learning.
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