Reading is at the heart of our curriculum at St. George’s. We believe in the transformative power of reading and strive to ensure that every student is able to appreciate the joys and benefits of reading in all its forms. We offer and provide a range of activities for students of all abilities to ensure they are able to be the best readers they can.

To stretch and challenge students and to encourage a love of reading, we give all year 7 students a reading book to take home under the Book Buzz scheme, and we send home reading books as part of our World Book Day celebrations. We encourage students to enter a range of reading and writing competitions, and strive to have authors and literary specialists visit the school. We offer books as prizes for our ePraise system to incentivise reading and make it known that we view reading in a positive light.

We also distribute an extensive KS3 and KS4 reading list for students and lend challenging books to students. To further promote reading for pleasure and embed a love of reading, lunchtime clubs take place in the library. KS3 students also have lessons in the library, and take part in national writing competitions via Young Writers. World Book Day is a major date in our school calendar each year; staff dress up and we run a whole host of fun activities and competitions, making it a highly engaging, memorable, and meaningful day for students.

Our focus on disciplinary literacy highlights the value of reading in every subject and models how each subject has its own unique language. Students are encouraged to speak, read, write and think like a subject specialist and are taught to use subject-specific language in a meaningful way as part of their communication. As part of our focus on explicit vocabulary instruction, the Word of the Day is embedded within each day, with students applying the words throughout the day and in form-time activities, further emphasising the importance of a robust vocabulary. We ensure to scaffold our reading tasks appropriately to ensure all tasks are accessible and meaningful for students.

We offer reading lists by year group, which can be found at the links below:

Drop Everything and Read takes place for all students in Years 7-10 for 30 minutes each week. Years 7-9 independently read a challenging novel, with the aim of fostering reading for enjoyment, as well as improving reading fluency and increasing vocabulary. For Year 10, subject teachers provide students with a stimulating, extended text such as a news article or academic journal that is linked with the curriculum and subject. This is then interwoven into the lesson through a discussion of big ideas, learning new technical vocabulary in context, or an evaluation of how contemporary issues and current affairs contribute to the subject. This approach allows us to develop rigour while reading and raise the profile of high-quality reading for students.

At St. George’s, we believe that there is a book out there for everyone, and we want to celebrate the process of finding the right book for the right student! To do this, we offer Bookbuzz to our Year 7 and Year 8 students at the start of each year. 

Bookbuzz gives students the chance to choose and keep a book they’ll love from a collection of 16 fiction and non-fiction titles, newly selected each year by our panel of BookTrust reading experts, practising teachers and school librarians.This curated programme of books and resources for secondary schools has been specially developed by BookTrust to encourage young people to get reading and includes a variety of text complexity and challenge, with dyslexia-friendly options.

Literacy intervention takes place throughout the week and is a successful way of supporting students who need additional support with their reading and writing. Guided reading and handwriting clubs also take place throughout each week. More information about our interventions can be found below.

We ensure our struggling readers are able to gain confidence in reading and make the progress needed to access the curriculum meaningfully. This year we have expanded our Guided Reading program to ensure our struggling readers are given the opportunity to read aloud on a weekly basis in a peaceful and supportive environment.

During a guided reading session, students read aloud with a Sixth Form “literacy ambassador” or a trained teaching assistant. Students gain valuable skills in decoding, fluency and comprehension, and build meaningful social connections in the process. They also have access to the wealth of resources in the library, ensuring they can choose a book that is appropriate for their ability and interests.

 

St. George’s wants to make sure we are able to provide every child with the chance to improve as a reader, and we realise that this may sometimes mean additional intervention. We offer weekly literacy intervention in the form of Lexia PowerUp Literacy.

Lexia Power Up Literacy is a personalized, adaptive, blended literacy program that applies the science of reading to help secondary students become proficient readers and confident learners. It is a computer-based program that adapts instruction to the specific needs of adolescent learners. We provide PowerUp intervention for students we have identified as having below average Standardised Age Scores.

Word Study: Students develop reading accuracy and fluency by focusing on sound and syllable patterns in words.

Grammar: Students learn how written language works in order to improve their writing and reading comprehension. They learn how parts of speech function in sentences and how sentence parts convey meaning.

Comprehension: Students learn skills & strategies to become independent and strategic readers. Passages include original and authentic texts of multiple genres including informational texts, narratives, drama, and poetry.

St. George’s uses Toe By Toe for phonics intervention. Since its publication in 1994, the Toe By Toe reading manual has taught over a million children and adults how to overcome their reading difficulties.

Toe by Toe is for anyone who finds reading difficult. This includes weak readers who struggle to decode or those with dyslexia, dyslexic difficulties or ADHD. Regardless of the nature of literacy problems, everyone can be taught to read using Toe By Toe.