LIfTT: Literacy Intervention for Teens and Tweens
What is LIfTT?
The ‘Literacy Intervention for Teens and Tweens’ (LIfTT) is a comprehensive, structured and customisable literacy intervention specifically designed for 10 to 16 year olds.
The LIfTT programme is:
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Targeted
LIfTT is specially designed for teens and tweens aged 10–16
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Comprehensive
LIfTT includes resources to support all the most important aspects of literacy
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Evidence-based
LIfTT is a structured intervention based on best practices drawn from research
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Customisable
LIfTT is easily adapted to individual students with diverse literacy needs
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Easy to teach
LIfTT includes a detailed Teaching Manual, making it easy to implement – even if you have no literacy training
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Versatile
LIfTT can be used one-to-one or in small groups, and accommodates timetabling constraints
An engaging intervention designed for teens and tweens
Teens and tweens can feel embarrassed and demotivated by literacy resources that look babyish or patronising. These negative feelings make them reluctant to engage and can slow down progress.
LIfTT overcomes this by using age-appropriate pictures and more challenging vocabulary. Along with activities that are fun and stimulating for older children and teenagers, this helps to keep them on-task and motivated.
LIfTT also helps students develop knowledge and skills relevant to secondary education, including reading, spelling and understanding advanced vocabulary, and writing complex sentences.
To find out more about what you get with LIfTT, download the guide ‘An Introduction to LIfTT’.
A comprehensive intervention with printable resources
Unlike other interventions that only cover certain areas, LIfTT covers of all the important aspects of literacy that teens and tweens can struggle with. It offers resources and guidance in areas including phonics, fluency, morphology, etymology, spelling, vocabulary and punctuation.
LIfTT contains 14 modules in total, including over 1000 worksheets, hands-on activities and games that support students with different aspects of literacy. The intervention is available as a PDF download for you to print, helping you to be fully prepared for every lesson.
High-quality, evidence-based resources you can trust
There are lots of literacy resources available on the web, but not all are of high quality or based on current best-practice. In addition, they generally don’t cover the full range of literacy skills that secondary pupils need. This makes selecting a coherent set of resources to use for individual students a very time-consuming task.
LIfTT solves this problem because all the activities are carefully designed to fit together perfectly as part of a cumulative, structured intervention for teens and tweens.
LIfTT is founded on research into how children learn to read and spell, the most effective teaching practices, and what cognitive science can tell us about learning and memory. It’s been put together by a former linguistics researcher who is an accredited practitioner for pupils with specific learning difficulties, and is currently working to support literacy at secondary school. All this means you can have confidence in what you’re teaching.
To see a list of LIfTT modules and sample resources, click here.
CASE STUDY
As Head of English, I have trialled numerous literacy interventions over the years, and I’ve been thoroughly impressed by the LIfTT programme and the meaningful difference it has made to our students.
In the wake of the pandemic, we have many students experiencing disruption and delay in their literacy, in areas ranging from decoding and fluency, to comprehension and vocabulary. Many interventions narrowly focus on one skill area, but LIfTT allows us to offer joined-up, holistic support for our students, and works to help them access the demands of the curriculum. One of its most valuable strengths is the way it enables us to identify and respond to individual learning needs through effective diagnostic assessment.
From a practical perspective, the intervention fits smoothly into our timetable. Students look forward to attending their sessions and when I ‘drop in’ they are engaged and focused. I often hear students asking to stay to finish an activity even after the bell has rung for breaktime, a real testament to the success of the programme!
Our support staff have responded incredibly positively to LIfTT. It’s easy to understand and deliver. I’m confident that any new staff would quickly feel comfortable and well-supported using it.
Most importantly, we are seeing tangible progress, not only in literacy attainment, but in learners’ confidence. I would wholeheartedly recommend LIfTT to other school leaders. It’s a thoughtful, intelligent intervention that supports real progress.
Jenny Conway, Head of English and Assistant Head
Easily tailored to the student’s needs
Older children and teenagers who struggle with literacy have a diverse range of needs. This varies from a lack of basic decoding skills to difficulty spelling long words, issues with using apostrophes, or trouble writing a coherent sentence! It’s therefore important that any intervention precisely targets those aspects, rather than taking a ‘one size fits all’ approach.
LIfTT addresses this by identifying gaps in the student’s knowledge using a literacy assessment, which you can download for free here. This assessment outputs a summary of the student’s strengths and weaknesses, and a list of the topics and modules that should be taught.
You then simply select and print the relevant modules from the LIfTT programme, read the relevant section of the Teaching Manual, and start teaching!
Step-by-step guidance is included
Whether you’re a literacy tutor, a teacher, teaching assistant, or home-schooling parent, providing literacy support can be challenging. It can be overwhelming to be confronted with the wide range of topics that teens and tweens need help with.
To help with this, LIfTT provides step-by-step guidance, so that even if you don’t have prior experience of literacy teaching, you can be confident about delivering the intervention.
Included as part of the LIfTT package are:
An Assessment Manual (available for free here) that guides you through the process of assessing each student’s needs and creating a plan for the intervention.
A Teaching Manual that describes how to teach each topic and how to use the resources. It includes learning objectives, explanations of key concepts, example dialogues with students, instructions for games, retrieval practice routines, and more.
In addition to this, training is available if you’d like to develop your confidence with the key concepts in LIfTT, or you’d like to be sure you’re implementing it as effectively as possible.
Adaptable to fit your timetable
LIfTT sessions can easily be adapted to fit within the constraints imposed by secondary-school timetables, tutoring sessions or home-schooling routines. You can use it one-to-one, in pairs or in small groups – meaning that you can easily group-together students with similar challenges or availability.
At least one hour per week is recommended, and several hours per week would be beneficial for students with more severe literacy difficulties (especially those that prevent them from engaging with mainstream classroom teaching).
For more information on how long it takes to complete LIfTT, download the introduction.
What are the wider benefits of LIfTT?
In addition to the practical features of LIfTT outlined above, if you choose to use it, you’ll start to see other benefits too:
Your students should be more enthusiastic and engaged – turning literacy sessions from a chore to a pleasure!
Your students will have a solid understanding of how words work – turning frustration (“Why is English so crazy?”) into satisfaction (“I never knew that!”)
You’ll eliminate the time you currently spend on finding, adapting and juggling multiple resources, because everything you need is contained within LIfTT.
Want to learn more? It’s all in the introductory document.
How much does LIfTT cost?
So that LIfTT can benefit as many students as possible, the entire intervention is offered at the very affordable flat fee of £400 per school/organisation/individual.
If you would prefer to pay in smaller chunks, you can purchase individual modules instead of the full intervention.
There are no expensive annual subscriptions, complex licences or renewals with LIfTT – it’s a simple set of PDFs that you can download and print as many times as you need (I just ask that you don’t share it outside your organisation).
I’m interested! What’s next?
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Free Introduction to LIfTT
For further information on LIfTT (including the principles behind LIfTT, advice on implementation, and further information about the programme content), download the 28-page guide An Introduction to LIfTT.
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LIfTT Modules
To find out more about LIfTT resources and to preview sample worksheets and activities, visit the Shop and click on the module titles.