Our Rationale and Goal
Our Literacy policy and reading strategies aim to consolidate, improve and stretch our readers at every opportunity. At Budmouth Academy, we are passionate and committed to removing barriers to reading and writing, to help foster a lifelong love of learning.
Whole School Strategies
Every subject across the school has recommended reading lists and key vocabulary, specific to their subject area, for students to learn. This helps to further facilitate literacy skills and support students’ understanding and progression in all subject areas.
At the beginning of every year in Key Stage 3, we test our students’ reading and spelling ages to ensure progression and inform our intervention groups. We use the LIFT (a guided reading programme, designed to address misconceptions with students’ understanding), to ensure that students feel confident engaging with challenging texts in lessons.
Alongside this, we utilise the expertise and enthusiasm of our 6th Form students in the form of a ‘reading buddy’ scheme, which aims to further assist enjoyment and progression at KS3.
Tutor Time
In tutor time tutors tailor the literacy focus each half term to the needs and interests of their tutees. Some of the options they can choose from are:
- DEAL (Drop Everything and Listen)-tutors listen to audiobooks with their tutor groups and discuss themes and ideas within the text.
- DEAR (Drop Everything and Read)-tutors read a class novel alongside their tutor group.
- Library book boxes-students read for enjoyment a selection of fiction and nonfiction texts tailored to their personal interest.
We have invested in the latest texts that encourage and challenge our students to learn about the world around them and beyond.
Reading and our Local Community
We work closely with the Chesil Reading Partnership and the National Literacy Trust on Literacy workshops and opportunities for our students. This has involved taking our KS3 students to Bournemouth University as part of their Books and Stories Project.
As part of this partnership, students have had the opportunity of studying and meeting authors and taking part in creative writing competitions.
Transition Project
All Year 6 students are given a new book on their transition day and asked to read and review it over the summer. The purpose of this is to empower students to read independently and expose them to genres they may not have read.
We also link our content and skills to those students finish covering at the end of Year 6 in our local feeder schools, to ensure students are able to make a smooth transition to the demands of the secondary school curriculum.
Strategies
As a whole school every subject has recommended reading lists and key vocabulary for students to learn to further facilitate literacy skill to support understanding and progression in all subject areas.
For every year in Key Stage 3 we test our students reading, comprehension and spelling to ensure progression and inform intervention. As a result, we have a LIFT programme to ensure that no one gets left behind in their reading from Year 7 into Year 8. We have reading ‘partnerships’ that feature 6th Form students reading with those in Year 7 to further assist enjoyment and progression.
Tutor time
We adapt this time to give students the opportunity to DEAL (Drop Everything and Listen) or DEAR (Drop Everything and Read) where tutors can choose from an extensive library of fiction to listen to in order to further facilitate a literary immersive experience. We invest in the latest texts that encourage and challenge our students to learn about the world around them and beyond.
Our Reading Strategy is about working with the community and Primary Schools
This year were working with the Chesil schools and the National Literacy Trust on a superhero project where students continued their reading and writing on David Soloman’s best-selling novel ‘My Brother is a Superhero’. In partnership with the National Literacy Trust and the Chesil Beach reading project all primary schools in the area participated in a writing competition where Year 6 wrote a story based on their own superhero. Here at Budmouth, we had the winner of the competition join us in Year 7 where, embossed with the design of the ‘winning’ superhero, library cards have been issued to Year 7 students giving them unprecedented access to a whole host of library services.
Recommended Reads
