Literacy

Literacy Overview

Literacy is essential to all learning throughout the school, in all years and across all subject areas. At Saint Aidan’s, we know that good literacy skills across the school curriculum enable students to communicate effectively.

They allow students to become more confident in their own abilities as learners and allow each child to develop their particular skills to the highest level possible.

We are firm believers in the fundamental principle that Literacy is the key to raising standards and improving learning. We aim to produce literate students who will emerge as confident and articulate communicators.

Students will focus on developing their literacy skills across the curriculum but most explicitly within their English lessons. In Year 7 students will focus on their knowledge of punctuation, parts of speech and on spelling strategies during their fourth hour dedicated Literacy lesson. If you have any questions or need more information, please contact kate-bray@st-aidans.lancs.sch.uk.

Reading

Reading is a vital part of life at Saint Aidan’s. Students are encouraged to read for pleasure as much as possible. During form time, once a week, students will read during DEAR time in their forms. Forms work on a rotation swapping reading material each half term. Forms will access a range of texts during DEAR time, reading both fiction and non-fiction texts. Students will be able to develop their Culture Capital as well as reading a plethora of texts in their time at Saint Aidan’s

In subject areas teachers encourage students to read around their subject, both in lessons and for homework tasks. Students are taught explicit reading strategies and these are incorporated into lessons and help students to become confident readers in an array of subject areas.

Reading is highly valued by staff and students and a strong reading culture has been harnessed at Saint Aidan’s. Students understand the value that reading has and take up opportunities to get involved, such as our annual World Book Day competitions

Accelerated reader

As previously stated, at Saint Aidan’s we believe that reading regularly is key to students being successful learners across all subjects. We know that developing avid readers also means developing students who are creative, analytical, interesting young people. It also helps build a greater vocabulary and improves literacy skills.

In order to help develop positive reading habits with our students we are now using, across the whole of Year 7, a reading programme called Accelerated Reader. Accelerated Reader tests a student’s reading level in a variety of ways and suggests books which are suitable for their ability, age and interests.

Students are then required to take a quiz within 24-48 hours of reading the book; this tests their understanding. Students receive points for each book (which vary depending on the word count) and their reading can be monitored closely by their English teacher. Students can access their Accelerated Reader profiles via a downloadable iOS app or via a web browser. The programme works best when students read for at least 20 minutes per day so please encourage your child to read as much as possible at home.

Parents/carers – You can also follow your child’s reading progress by using the following link https://Ukhosted82.renlearn.co.uk/1893512/HomeConnect and inputting their username and password. This will take you to the parent site ‘Home Connect’ which allows you to see their quiz results and progress.

Students – to access Accelerated Reader follow this link https://ukhosted82.renlearn.co.uk/1893512/

Literacy guides available for download on the right.

Bedrock

Targeting vocabulary and grammar at KS3 is something else we at Saint Aidan’s are very passionate about. All students in Years 7 and 8 have access to Bedrock Vocabulary and Grammar. This is a software where students can target their vocabulary and grammar, targeting weaknesses and how to sustainably aid them in their development in these two areas.

Students are asked to spend 20-40 minutes a week on Bedrock, this is achieved through time in English lessons and through homework tasks. Please encourage your child to spend adequate time on Bedrock, their weekly time and progress is pinned to their Bedrock home screen so students and parents can easily see how they are progressing.