Literacy and Reading

A round up of everything that has been happening in Literacy and reading this year, so far.

Star Reader Testing - Year 11 and Year 7

At the beginning of this academic year, our priority has been to ensure that we are fully informed of our students' reading ages, so that we can identify those who may need additional support to access texts used in the academy. Year 7 and Year 11 both sat their Star Reader tests at the beginning of the year and the results have been analysed. Using this information, and working with the SEN department, students identified as requiring some additional support sat phonics and fluency tests. These results have enabled up to provide support where necessary, either through one to one or small group sessions. In the next few weeks the Post-16 led fluency sessions will begin, ensuring that even more support is in place for our developing readers.

Reading for Pleasure

This year, we have introduced new reading for pleasure challenges to engage our students in the joy of reading:

The Pick 'n' Mix Challenge

Whilst completing this challenge, students can choose from a range of reading texts as seen here:

This challenge works like a bingo card, with students crossing off rows, columns and whole cards to win prizes, literacy points, tokens for the Inter College Reading Trophy and as the name suggests, a bag of Pick 'n' Mix sweets.

With such a variety of text types to read, this challenge is proving very popular with plenty of counters being placed into the college boxes. So much so, that we have had to purchase even more tokens to keep up with demand!

The Library remains a busy place and Mrs Dunne, our Librarian, is kept on her toes as book after book is signed out of the Library by our eager readers.

IB Pick & Mix Reading Challenge

Our Inter College Reading Trophy

16B416 Challenge

This year we have decided to open up the 16B416 Challenge to all students. This is so our more confident readers have access to classics that they may never have come across before. By their very nature, these books are more complex and deal with some mature and intriguing themes and are not for the fainthearted, and so students are carefully guided to make the right choices by our Librarian, Mrs Dunne. The list of texts includes:

Lord of the Flies – William Golding

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson

The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger

Animal Farm – George Orwell

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou

Misery – Stephen King

Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier

The Book Thief – Markus Zusak

Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck

Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro

Noughts and Crosses - Malorie Blackman

Life of Pi – Yann Martel

Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens

Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

Gulliver's Travels - Johnathan Swift

Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

Frankenstein – Mary Shelley

To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee

The Outsiders – S.E. Hinton

The Hobbit - JR Tolkien

Literacy at the Year 6 Open Evenings

As always, the Literacy and reading facilities were well represented at the recent open evenings. A range of activities were available as parents and future students explored the Library.

Our very own Book Doctor, Emily, prescribed books for all and our 'Who's Coming to Dinner competition was a great success, with many children identifying the correct characters. The Virtual Library added an extra layer of excitement as children explored the site for an interesting text or audiobook; some just did not want to leave!

Parents and children alike were impressed by the competitive edge to our reading for pleasure plan as they were shown the college counter boxes by Emily and Esme.

Golden Ticket Competition

In the lead up to Christmas, we have been running the 'Golden Ticket' competition. Five golden tickets had been hidden in books in the library and when found led to our students winning fifty literacy points, five tokens for the Inter-College Reading Trophy and a Christmas gift.

This is not an easy challenge given that we have thousands of books in our library, so congratulations to our winners, below: