Reading Strategy
Our Reading Strategy
At Haileybury Turnford we understand the importance of developing our students’ ability to read and comprehend text, particularly subject specific academic text which uses ambitious language. We have therefore been using the guidance provided by the Education Endowment Foundation to form our reading strategy at Haileybury Turnford to improve disciplinary literacy across the curriculum.
The main areas of focus are:
- Developing students’ ability to read complex academic text
- Providing targeted vocabulary instruction in every subject
- Developing students’ passion for reading
- Providing high quality literacy interventions for struggling students
Developing students’ ability to read complex academic text
- Teachers at Haileybury Turnford have been asked to identify the barriers within their subjects academic reading. Teachers have also identified and created more opportunities within their schemes of learning for students to read ambitious texts.
- Teachers have been provided with training to support the delivery of reading within their subject and a consistent approach has been taken. The different reading strategies should be adopted within lessons. Students are encouraged to read aloud without feeling embarrassed to create a positive learning environment and to improve reading fluency.
- Students are encouraged to summarise, predict, question, clarify and activate prior knowledge when completing reading comprehension activities.
Providing targeted vocabulary instruction in every subject
- Teachers have considered specialised vocabulary when developing schemes of learning within their subject discipline. They have incorporated tier 3 language where possible and morphological patterns across the curriculum should be discussed.
- A common approach to vocabulary instruction has been developed across the curriculum. Staff have been encouraged to use our new “Vocabulary slide” when teaching a new and important challenging word.
- Students should be given ample opportunities to hear, see and use new words.
Developing students’ passion for reading
- Our form time class reading sessions are designed to engage and promote the love of reading. Each form will read the same reading book using a variety of reading strategies. Questions are provided at the end of the chapter to prompt understanding and further discussion.
- Our new library is a fun and engaging space with a variety of books from different genres. Students are shown how to access texts within the library through our curriculum model.
Providing high quality literacy interventions for struggling students
- Students who have been identified as having a reading age below their expected age will be chosen for appropriate interventions such as Lexia. This provision is delivered during the morning by a trained team of staff.
