Reading

Reading is vital to participate in society. We explicitly teach reading skills to all pupils, with a thorough intervention programme for those who find reading hardest. 

Our approach to reading: Universal, Targeted and Specialist interventions

Universal strategies

These approaches are used across the curriculum disciplines to support students with fluency, vocabulary and comprehension.

Universal strategies include: 

  • Explicit teaching of vocabulary through tried and tested methods- e.g. inside, outside and beyond and 6 step vocabulary instruction. 

  • Guided annotation of texts to teach approaches on how to read and comprehend texts or differing backgrounds 

  • Reading opportunities in different disciplines across the curriculum including paired reading 

  • All pupils have a Sparx Reading homework task of 30 mins a day. 

We assess reading ages at the start and end of the year to measure reading progress. The NGRT assessment is an adaptive assessment which responds to pupil ability. The assessment provides us with a reading age for all pupils.  

Following this, pupils are placed into targeted and specialist interventions to develop skills in their area of need. 

Targeted strategies

  1. All pupils with a reading age of 9 years and 6 months (or lower) are assessed on the Read Write Inc. Fresh Start curriculum. The Fresh Start programme supports students to progress in decoding, comprehension and fluency. Pupils are assessed every 5 weeks to ensure the intervention is adapted to their needs.  

  1. All pupils with a reading age 2_ years below their chronological age receive an intervention through Lexia. This is a personalised online programme which adapts to pupil need in vocabulary, fluency and comprehension. 

  2. Pupils who are new to English in KS3 follow an adapted curriculum that teaches then English as a second language. At KS4 pupils have additional English lessons to enhance their language and communication skills. 

Structure of our reading interventions

Fresh Start - If a student is struggling to decode words, they complete Fresh Start, a teacher-led phonics reading programme, before graduating onto Lexia.

Lexia - If a student is struggling with comprehension, they use computer-based platform Lexia to diagnose exactly where they are struggling and how the teacher can best support them. When students make a year’s progress in their reading, they graduate out of Lexia and into Morning Reading.

Specialist

If there is a significant difference between a pupil's  vocabulary skill and their comprehension, pupils are assessed in school against the Dyslexia Screener. Although this is not a Dyslexia assessment, it provides support in identifying areas of need such as processing, working memory and decoding. 

If both vocabulary and comprehension are low, and no or little improvement is seen in the first assessment, the pupil is assessed using the YARC reading assessment which provides a further reading age and areas of need in comprehension and fluency.  

If significant concerns are highlighted through the assessments, referrals can be made to external agencies including Pupil Support Services and Speech and Language Support.