Reading and literacy is the fundamental skill that sits within the skill set of successful learners. It underpins a pupil’s ability to learn and progress in every subject that they undertake.
We’ve been really pleased with our bespoke reading curriculum that was introduced this year, providing dedicated time within the curriculum for pupils to develop their reading and literacy skills.
The curriculum exposes pupils to a range of reading materials and resources through a thematic approach and staff, who have received specific training, are able to guide learners through the material to develop and refine their reading skills.
This, combined with our form time reading programme and the inclusion of subject based literature within the curriculum for each subject, supports pupils with their reading fluency, their ability to decode text and with comprehension.
Exposure to more opportunities to read supports the development of pupil vocabulary, but we have also embedded a new vocabulary strategy this year focused on specifically delivering the vocabulary found in Coxhead’s academic word list.
This extensive list is derived from Avril Coxhead’s research identifying the words most frequently used within academic texts.
Pupils study words so that they are familiar with the words they are likely to encounter when studying subjects undertaken within our rigorous and academic curriculum.
This wider vocabulary will serve pupils well when they need to undertake independent study through college and university and also whilst navigating their chosen career.
Pupils have enjoyed their learning through the reading curriculum and we’ve been delighted with the progress we’ve been able to
track through nationally standardise assessments undertaken at the start of each term.
We’re pleased to report that the results show an improvement at each assessment point, with each year group sitting above the national average for age related standardised scores; that it is to say that, on average, pupils’ reading ability sits above their peers nationally.
We’d like to congratulate pupils on their progress in this area across the year.