WHY WE READ:

Research shows that there are clear links between independent readers and academic outcomes. Our Whole School Reading Programme is designed to engage students in a love of reading, building their independent reading skills over time to advance their academic and pastoral success.

Alex Quigley (Closing the Reading Gap) highlights the benefits:

• ‘Pupils who read well have less difficulty accessing the curriculum.
• Pupils experience academic vocabulary, language structures and cultural insights when they read widely
• Reading influences knowledge, skills and vocabulary in every subject, in every discipline
• Pupils need to ‘read’ exam questions and unpack entire complex processes from exam command words and complex vocabulary by Year 10
• Reading helps improve mental health and overall wellbeing and can help us become the best version of ourselves’

HOW WE READ:

Form tutors read aloud to their tutor group once or twice a week for 20 minutes with students engaging in discussion and learning new vocabulary as they read a text as a class. Our texts are appropriate for students’ reading ages and they are diverse in culture, era and genre.

Form Tutors read aloud, at pace and with fluency, novels that their tutees would not easily access independently. Thus, we are equipping students with the skills and confidence to become fluent, independent life-long readers.

‘Read-Aloud is a unique opportunity to breathe life into texts that students are unable to read independently, so as to make those texts accessible … When you read a complex text aloud, you pave the way for students to read it themselves’ Doug Lemov (Reading Reconsidered).

Form Tutors read aloud, at pace and with fluency, novels that their tutees would not easily access independently. Thus, we are equipping students with the skills and confidence to become fluent, independent life-long readers.

Accelerated Reader

Accelerated Reader is an online program that helps us to manage and monitor students’ independent reading practice. Students take an initial baseline reading test and are then re-tested at several points during the year in order for us to monitor their progress. The first test allocates students a reading range (called the ‘ZPD’) giving a personalised selection of books they can read which offer challenge whilst minimising frustration or loss of motivation. Students are also given a personalised points target to work towards each half term.

The books in the library are labelled with the reading range (ZPD) information along with a colour-code to help students choose books based on their reading range. Once a student has chosen a book and read it, they will take a short quiz and as long as they pass the quiz, they will ‘earn’ the points the book has been allocated towards their personalised target.

The process of quizzing and collecting points allows teachers to monitor who is reading, who is taking quizzes based on the books they have read and who is making progress. English teachers and our Librarian will be able to monitor student progress in reading and to give advice if students are not enjoying particular books. Students achieving their target will have the opportunity to earn badges, prizes and to take part in termly reward lessons.

Not all books have quizzes; this does not mean that students are banned from reading these books as any reading practice allows children the opportunity to progress. If a student reads a book without a quiz, they can write their own quiz for the book that can be added to the system or they can write a book review. To search for books from outside of school that might have a quiz you can use the website www.arbookfind.co.uk

Please click on the Accelerated reader logo below to login and get started:

Suggested reading lists for Secondary School students