Literacy is placed at the heart of what we do at St Margaret’s. It is key in ensuring that all our students are able to live our vision that ‘all things are possible for one who believes’. We are passionate in our belief that a strong reading culture, underpinned by high-quality, research-based literacy strategies will ensure that all our students are able to thrive as confident readers, successful writers and articulate orators. We are committed in our belief that literacy should not be a barrier for anyone – it should be a gateway. Reading for pleasure and progress is integral to the teaching, learning and personal development of our pupils.
Struggling Readers: Intervention
All KS3 and KS4 students are assessed using GL’s NGRT to provide accurate data and individualised reading reports to identify intervention needs, reading ages and strengths and weaknesses for each pupil.
Struggling readers who have a reading age significantly below their chronological age and require phonics intervention receive 1:1 or 1:2 support from members of the intervention team. We use the Lexonik Leapprogramme.
Students who have a reading age somewhat below their chronological age with a requirement for comprehension and inference support receive a bespoke intervention package that targets these skills. This is delivered to small groups twice a week.
Reading for Learning Across the Curriculum
Literacy is a core strand of all curriculum planning and delivery. We use a range of strategies to support a mastery of vocabulary knowledge and usage (e.g. pre-teaching vocabulary and assessing understanding of new vocabulary, morphology, etymology, choral responses [I say/ we say/ you say], Frayer models etc).
All subjects embed opportunities for academic reading within schemes of work. Teachers read aloud to pupils to model fluency, tone, pace and pronunciation (aka prosody) as well as ensuring that students are given regular opportunities to read aloud. Subject-specific reading libraries are promoted within classrooms and booklists are used to encourage wider reading.
We believe in the power of our students’ voices and use a common range of strategies to promote confidence and clarity in oracy as well as accuracy and coherence in written responses.
St Margaret’s Reads
Form reads offer students the opportunity to engage with challenging yet accessible texts. Form tutors read aloud to students for 20 minutes, three times per week. Discussions and debates that arise out of reading are linked to our school values and our personal development curriculum.
Current SMA Reads List
Year 7: When the Sky Falls by Phil Earle and The Bone Sparrow by Zara Fraillon
Year 8: The Giver by Lois Lowry and King of Shadows by Susan Cooper
Year 9: The Blue Book of Nebo by Manon Steffan Ros and I am Malala by Malala Yousafzai
Year 10: Scythe by Neal Shusterman and The Hate You Give by Angie Thomas
Year 11: The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
Reading Beyond the Classroom
All students are expected to have a reading book with them as part of their school equipment.
We use Sparx Reader to promote wider reading and ‘reading for pleasure’: it is set as part of the English homework for all KS3 students. Teachers and parents can track what books students are reading as well as how successfully, accurately and fluently they are reading. Students are required to attain a minimum of 300 Sparx points per week which equates to 30 minutes of reading. The online programme offers a range of e-books that are suitably matched to their individual reading age and comprehension checks/ quizzes occur regularly to assess engagement and understanding.
Literacy Coordinator: Miss E. Atherton
SLT Reading Lead: Mrs S. Bell