Teaching Literacy: Understanding Readers and Reading

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Reading is an essential skill for life, not just within formal education. On this short course, you will explore learning and teaching reading and focus on reading comprehension and the strategies that make a successful reader.

This course is suited to:

 This short course is designed for teachers of reading and other professionals who work with children and young people to improve their reading skills. It would also be suitable for anyone with a critical interest in the role of children’s literature within education. Whatever your professional background, the course will help you develop highly valued transferable skills, including critical evaluation, independent study, presentation and debating skills.

What will I learn?

As a student on this short course, you will develop a strong theoretical understanding of reading and teaching reading and address questions such as ‘what is the difference between reading and comprehension?’, ‘what do we know about reading comprehension and different levels of understanding?’ and ‘what is the relationship between text and image in picture books?’. From this, you will be able to develop your own professional practices.

You will finish the course feeling better equipped to teach reading in a way that prioritises comprehension and gives young readers successful reading strategies. The course will also allow you to explore and analyse children’s literature through from picture books to teen and crossover fiction.

Learning outcomes

• Demonstrate a critical understanding of reading comprehension
• Critically evaluate different disciplinary perspectives of models of reading
• Demonstrate a critical understanding of literature written for children
• Consider and critically reflect on ideas concerning the relationship between educational theory, research, policy and practice
• Critically reflect upon and evaluate your own understanding of current issues and debates in education and those of others
• Synthesise and organise ideas to present an argument
• Present ideas and engage in critical reflective debate
• Undertake both directed and independent study to recognise, justify and analyse key ideas in the literature and relate these to research, theory, policy and practice 

How is the module assessed?

For this course, you should expect to engage in structured learning activities for 10-15 hours per week on average, plus additional time spent on self-directed learning (such as further reading or preparing for assessments).

The taught course can be completed in 12 weeks, with the final submission at the beginning of week 10. Engagement in activities is required until Week 12. Marking and feedback are provided after this, in line with University policy.

Module staff

Entry Requirements

There are no academic entry requirements for our online short courses. We will, however, consider all applications individually on merit, and will in particular consider applications where there is evidence of significant relevant work experience or professional qualification.

English language requirements

International students need to show they have the required level of English language to study this course.

The required test scores for this course fall under Profile B2.