Reading

“Firm foundations in reading are critical to breaking the cycle of educational inequality – and to improving the wider life chances of the poorest and most disadvantaged children.” - Read On. Get On Report

At Meden, we aim to equip learners with knowledge, skills, and attributes to be able to do something about the injustices of the world. We aim to ensure our learners develop life-long reading, writing and oracy skills that allow them to communicate effectively in school, in the wider community and beyond.

The reading policy is a key strategy for removing barriers to learning which, if left unchallenged, will limit the progress, engagement, and development of our learners. The policy aims to remove key barriers to learning, but particularly focuses on improving reading fluency.

Reading Fluency

Teachers develop students’ fluency of reading by modelling reading in class and expecting students to read during lesson. This is done through the following three principles.

  • Accuracy: reading words correctly. This includes accurate decoding and word recognition. This enables automaticity and prosody to develop.
  • Automaticity: reading words automatically. This requires reading accuracy; enables an appropriate reading speed and feels effortless.
  • Prosody: reading with appropriate stress and intonation. This requires reading accuracy and comprehension; leads to variation in volume, phrasing, smoothness and pace, and sounds interesting and engaged.

Meden’s Commitment to reading:

  • Staff use subject-specific reading strategies to support students in developing their reading skills.
  • Students access a range of age-appropriate quality texts across genres in a range of curriculum areas.
  • Staff encourage students to read with enjoyment and engagement.

How do we target reading at Meden?

Reading is targeted at individual intervention level, departmental level, and whole school level. A range of strategies are employed in each area. Please see the image below for more detail.

Reading Canon & Big Read Sessions

As a school Meden is fully committed to improving the reading of all of our students while they are with us. We arrange our tutor period and timetable so that all students in year 7-11 are given the opportunity to read and 6 Big Read extended sessions (1hr 15mins) a year.

- KS3 Reading Canon: Term 1 (Autumn) 1 x 25min session a week

- KS4 Reading Canon: Every other half term 1 x 25mins session a week

During tutor time and big read sessions students will have the opportunity to read and listen to staff read while they follow the text. They will then be given the opportunity, via the big read sessions to explore the big ideas in the text and learn more about what it can teach us about the world.

KS3 Library Lessons

What happens in Library lessons:

  • To develop a love of reading
  • To encourage students to read for pleasure
  • To develop students’ reading fluency

As such the library lessons are planned to in the following way:

Class read: as a class, students read a chosen text. The book is read by the teacher as expert. This encourages enjoyment of the story and helps students to build on their vocabulary range.

Oracy task: students are encouraged to talk about an element of the class read, whether that be character development, plot twists and developments or central ideas and themes in the story. This supports students’ oracy skills whilst also allowing them to discuss key messages in the text. This ties into the whole school curriculum intent of challenging injustices and ‘doing something about them.’ The teacher provides prompts for this task.

Book promotion: the librarian shares recommended reads to students to widen their reading choices and expose them to new genres. There is sometimes an opportunity for students to share their favourite books too.

Independent reading: students are given the opportunity to read their own chosen text silently. This encourages independent reading and reading for pleasure. During this activity, some students will further develop their reading by buddy reading with a trained sixth form students or with their class teacher. This is targeted support based on the reading text data and helps students to develop their reading fluency.

Golden ticket reward: at the end of each lesson, golden tickets are awarded for fostering a love of reading, sharing their book choices with the class, and for buddy reading efforts.

Reading at Home and for Pleasure

Studies show that the top 10% of students read more than 40 minutes a day, whilst the bottom 10% read less than 2 minutes a day. Anderson, Wilson and Fielding (1988) Research also indicates that students who read appropriately complex texts 25 minutes or more a day will grow at twice the rate of those reading less than 5 minutes daily. Renaissance Learning (2014)

A child that reads for 30 minutes a day at home reads for an extra 10,950 minutes a year. Over the course of their secondary school education that amounts to 54,750 minutes. Compare this to a child that doesn’t read at home at all. This means a child that reads at home will become the more confident, mature and successful individual.

We can’t stress enough how important reading at home is. We recognise and respect the role of the parent as a child’s primary educator in this area and want to support you in this role.

Click here for a 7 Top Tips to Support Reading at Home guide by the Education Endowment Foundation

October 2024

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