Literacy
From January 2023 we will be launching our new Literacy policy called LIFE. This stands for:
Listen to yourself and others read
Identify areas you need to improve upon and act on them
Familiarise yourself with key words and exam terminology
Enjoy reading, writing and speaking using Standard English
The 2022 GCSE results indicated that 25% of GCSE students had a reading age of 12 or below nationally. Therefore Literacy must take a whole school approach. Our mission is to continue to embed a reading culture and to actively teach reading in every subject. Our mantras are that Readers become Leaders and that our students must Read to Succeed.
Our aims are to ensure that all students are encouraged to read as often as they can, we will provide time for them to read and the necessary support. We also want to ensure that the students are reading at home. Students in years 7-9 will have tutor readers and complete a reading programme as a tutor group three mornings a week. We will provide intervention for those that need it and continue to promote a love of reading via our Library Ambassadors, peer reading program, the use of the library and lunch time, our book club and our writing competitions.
Literacy Ambassadors
Our Literacy Ambassadors do lots of work within the school, including:
Writing book reviews for the rest of the school
Arranging visiting speakers
Collating and organising keywords for each subject per term
Primary School visits
Assemblies for each year group
Collating and arranging command words for each subject
Support in the library every lunch time
Peer reading support
Prizes and rewards for top readers
Collating and arranging writing frames for each subject
Form Reader Books
Refugee
Year Seven
Refugee follows the stories of three different children and their families, each attempting to flee their violent homelands, in different regions of the world and during different decades. Josef and his family flee Nazi Germany in 1938; Isabel and her family flee Cuba in 1994; and Mahmoud and his family flee Syria in 2015.
The London Eye Mystery
Year Eight
The London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd is a mystery novel that follows Ted and his older sister Kat as they try to discover how their cousin Salim disappeared from the London Eye. Ted, who has Asperger's Syndrome, discovers clues that will ultimately lead to Salim's rescue.
Slated
Year Nine
Set in a near future where criminals are given a second chance by having their minds wiped clean – they are “slated” or made into “blank slates.” Slated follows the quest of one slated teenage girl to find out the truth about herself, her past, and the government's increasingly arbitrary use of mind-wiping technology.
