Research has shown that reading develops children’s vocabulary and writing, memory and concentration and creativity and imagination. It underpins our entire curriculum here at Carlton le Willows, and we have a variety of strategies to support reading in lessons, alongside a range of intervention in place to support our struggling readers.

The English Reading Strategy (ERS) underpins all English lessons. Students approach texts using specific skills and strategies to systematically breakdown vocabulary, which ensures competent understanding of the content of texts.

The English Curriculum has chosen specific texts that present barriers to students and allows students to experience a range of strategies to overcome these barriers. The barriers include non-fiction texts, non-linear time sequences, complex and multiple narrators, multiple plots and storylines, resistant texts and archaic texts. We promote the use of reading rulers in lessons when students read to allow them to keep up with the text when the teacher is reading and to assist them to keep their place if they are reading by themselves.

Tackling texts promotes the strategies used in The English Reading Strategy across the whole Academy. Teachers in every curriculum area frame the texts for students, remove barriers to learning, including the preloading of vocabulary and context, and complete layered reads followed by answering the outcome questions.

Available Intervention

All KS3 students have these reading opportunities:

Students on Ruth Miskin Fresh Start, Rapid Plus or Reading Plus intervention read for the following on a weekly basis:

All Year 7 and 8 students sit the New Group Reading Test (NGRT) twice a year in September and March and this produces results that enable us to monitor students’ reading fluency and comprehension. The test is an adaptive test that introduces students to three types of questions, assessing their knowledge of vocabulary, comprehension and their ability to decode texts.

The results also help us to identify areas that may hold a child back and allows us to develop the appropriate intervention. It presents accurate information that helps us support individual children and allows us to measure the impact of the intervention we put into place.

We have a dedicated weekly reading club for Year 7, Year 8 and Year 9 where we allow students to choose the texts and we debate the best sections of the texts. These clubs are fun, interactive and enjoyed by all who attend. All clubs begin by focusing on a philosophical question to help to enhance thinking and debating skills.

We also have our Reading Routes challenge in which students in Year 7, Year 8 and Year 9 have a termly challenge to read six books on the Reading Routes line. The whole programme has been designed to resemble the London Tube Map, with each Delta school acting as a main stop and the lines between them providing the books of a specified genre.

If a student reads all six books in a term, they will receive a gold coin that can be used in our Rewards Vending Machine that is situated in the canteen.

Our Learning Resource Centre (LRC) has over ten thousand books for students to access ranging from non-fiction texts to numerous genres of fiction books. We have a dedicated LRC manager who will help to guide students in lessons. As mentioned above, classes in Key Stage 3 have a dedicated library lesson every three weeks, in which they can choose a new library book to loan. We encourage all students to loan a book each library lesson and we would advise that students should read for twenty minutes a day to enable them to continue to expose themselves to new vocabulary and texts.

The LRC is open at 8am every day before school and it is available until 3:30 after school. Students can use access it at these times to read for pleasure, change their library books or to use one of the 32 computers for their home learning assignments.