Literacy

The importance of reading

Reading each night is an important aspect of educational success. Indeed, research has proven that reading enjoyment is more important for children's educational success than any other factor (OECD, 2002).  For this reason, the school routinely tests students’ reading age. 

To improve their reading further, students must read a book every night for at least 30 minutes.  They should aim to finish a book of their choice every two weeks.  It is very important that you encourage them to do so.  All students have access to a range of challenging and age-appropriate books to borrow in the school library. 

All students in Year 7-10 have silent reading once a week in tutor time, in addition to Literacy focused tutor time activities once a week.

All 6th form students have access to the book box in the 6th form LC for a selection of reading, as well as routine visits to their lessons from our library team, who bring books relevant to their subjects to class for borrowing.

Reading age tests (Years 7-11):

HASJW uses a programme called NGRT to test students' reading age (More information is available here).  The test is made up of two parts: sentence completion (which measures decoding with some element of comprehension); and passage comprehension (which measures a range of comprehension skills of increasing difficulty). 

Students who read routinely for pleasure often have reading ages higher than their actual age.  Some students have reading ages lower than their actual age (e.g. they might be 14 years old but have a reading age of 13, because their language skills are under-developed.)  These students receive extra support in school.  Please, see attached document on our Literacy Interventions for these students.

Targeted support (Years 7-13):

Depending on the reading age of students and their needs, they may be invited to attend some of the following. Please, see attached document on 'Literacy Interventions Overview' for evaluation of the impact of these interventions, as well as details of how staff are trained to deliver this support and how students are selected.

• 'Books and Biscuits': Tuesday and Wednesday lunchtime (voluntary attendance: all welcome)
• 'Literacy Support Groups': Monday, 3.50-4.40PM (Students are grouped according to whether their need relates to comprehension, phonics, EAL, conversation-making)
• EAL A & B support intervention: timetabled for students in groups throughout the week
• Our Key Stage 3 and Year 12 reading mentors programme: Tuesday tutor time
• Phonics focused Year 8 class - This intervention takes place during the first 20 minutes of English lessons. We ensure these students do not miss out on the English curriculum as a consequence: they study the same curriculum as all other students in the remaining 40 minutes of the lesson with the guidance of one of our most experienced English teachers, Ms Kulecki, and Ms Osman, our Literacy LSA. 
• Literacy Support focused Year 7 class - Students are grouped according to whether their need relates to comprehension, phonics, EAL).  This intervention takes place during the first 20 minutes of English lessons.  We ensure these students do not miss out on the English curriculum as a consequence: they study the same curriculum as all other students in the remaining 40 minutes of the lesson with the support of 4 adults in the room - this allows for intense support during coverage of our English curriculum.
• Creative Writing club and Debate Club (Y7-11)- Wednesday lunchtime and 3.50-4.30PM (voluntary attendance: all welcome)
• Spelling Bee (Y7) - termly events 
• Debate Mate (Y7-10) - Wednesday, 4-5PM
• 6th form Oracy (Y12-13) - student run societies, including Medicine-Dentistry Society, and the process of EPQ presentations offer 6th form students the chance to develop their oracy skills.  In addition, Y12 have a guest speakers model oracy skills every Friday, period 5.

Bedrock, vocabulary development:

Bedrock is a teaching tool/intervention.  It teaches students new vocabulary.   

In February 2024, we received this email from the makers of Bedrock: 

“I wanted to reach out and firstly to say congratulations [...] Not only are you very near the top of the Harris rankings, but also international ones too- it's truly amazing!” 

In March 2024, we received this email from the makers of Bedrock: 

“On behalf of Bedrock Learning, I wanted to pass on my heartfelt congratulations for your impressive learner engagement in February. On average, pupils learned 49 words each [in February] and made 72% of progress in terms of words learned.” 

Accelerated Reader (Years 7-10):

To support students’ reading skills we use a programme called Renaissance Place (Accelerated Reader), which allows students to take quizzes on books they have read.  Their English teacher will then offer advice on what they might read next. This program has a special feature called Renaissance Home Connect, which your child and you can access outside of school from any computer with an Internet connection. Renaissance Home Connect is fun and easy to use. It allows the teacher, you and your child to share information about their progress in Accelerated Reader. You can log in to Renaissance Home Connect from any computer with an Internet connection and compatible browser. Their usernames and passwords can be found in their planners.

For a list of compatible browsers, please click here.

If you'd like to receive emails showing your student's quiz or test results, click the Email Setup link in Renaissance Home Connect and follow the directions. To be sure these emails reach your inbox, add homeconnectautodelivery@renlearnrp.com to your address book. 

 

Bedrock (Year 7-10):

Students also have access to Bedrock, a programme to help them develop vocabulary and improve their literacy.  As you will see from our recent Impact report (available for download below), HASJW has internationally some of the best scores on Bedrock. Students should use Bedrock every Monday/Wednesday/Friday evening, as part of their homework.  However, they are able to complete tasks every day including weekends, if they wish to do so.  Students have already been provided with the usernames and passwords.  Access codes are also available for parents so that they can also track and monitor the progress of their child. These are stuck into student planners. If you cannot find the stickers in their planners, you can get these access codes by emailing dilan.kulekci@harrisstjohnswood.org.uk.