Reading School Introduction and Rationale
At Trinity High School and Sixth Form Centre we place reading at the forefront of our education: first thing in the morning, every day. Not being able to read to your correct age means that you struggle much more just attempting to understand what is being said and written, and when you consider that only 59% of pupils leaving primary school reached the expected level for reading in 2022, many of those pupils will struggle to access the secondary school curriculum.
At Trinity High School, we are aspirational for every single child that is in our care, and we understand what is required to improve the reading ages of all our pupils: we are taking the necessary action to make sure this happens. After analysing reading assessments, we now realise that a pressing concern is ensuring that all students in our school should be able to read to their chronological age as a bare minimum because reading is an integral skill, needed to interact with others throughout their lives. We know that students are now asked across all subjects to read academic texts with increasing complexity, and it is part of our literacy strategy to ensure all students are equipped with the skills to do this.
We want so much for all the young people that attend Trinity to achieve personal growth, happiness and accumulation of useful knowledge for their future life; we also want to ensure that they have a voice and meaning to their adult professional life. This starts in the home, the classroom, and with the way in which they understand the world around them.
As teachers we are expert readers; through our own study we understand the demand of independent reading to learn. Our pupils are novice readers – no matter what their current reading level, we have a responsibility to help them progress. English is the language of all our subjects. For pupils to be able to progress as learners throughout their lives, they need to be able to read and to process increasingly difficult texts. Reading School is one way we help them to achieve this.
Reading School Intent
- Every student in our school can read to their chronological age as a bare minimum.
2. Through regular exposure to high-quality literature, students will accumulate useful knowledge and achieve personal growth, emotional resilience and happiness.
3. Reading School will allow us to entice students through reading, delight them through reading and challenging their thinking every day.
The Killer Research
At Trinity, the implementation of our quality of education is underpinned by our Trinity Teaching framework and evidence-based research. To become experts, we must listen to experts. When approaching the science of reading, we have made great steps in reading, researching, testing, and discussing the best approaches for our children. This research has led to a plan to enable all students in the academy to read every day, with a variety of texts, and to enable them to have a specific reading lesson.
Research analysis comparing the engaged reading time of 2.2 million students found that:
0-5 mins per day = well below national average
5-14 mins per day = sluggish gains below national average
15+ mins = accelerated reading gains
20 mins per day = likely score better than 90% of their peers on standardised tests.
(Source – National Centre for Education Statistics)
How Reading School works?
Reading School is our platform to allow students to be enticed and delighted by literature almost every single day. It is also about daily exposure to reading for the correct length of time to accelerate reading gains. Therefore, at Trinity every day apart from assembly day begins with reading. Our school day begins at 8.40am and after fifteen minutes with their tutor, students change their focus and the form group becomes a reading group where specific reading knowledge is developed with texts targeted to each child’s reading ability. We test the students each year to understand their current reading ability and we have specific groups designed to assist our weakest readers and help them make rapid progress and push our strongest readers into exciting new territory.
The Reading School Groups and Evaluating Impact
Our Reading School Groups have been developed to ensure students make maximum reading progress. We use the National Group Reading Test from GL Assessments to determine student reading ages. Every year we retest students, evaluate progress, and identify students who may need to change reading groups.
Our groups have been carefully configured. Some of the students from each form visit the HEART centre each morning to obtain support to make rapid reading progress whilst some other students attend a group to stretch and challenge our most confident and able readers. Students and staff have been given agency over book choices and therefore enjoy reading school together – it is a calm, purposeful and enjoyable start to the day.
As well as our form Reading School groups our extra Reading Groups are:
Reading Refresh – this intensive computer-based group focuses on those students for whom reading is a challenge. We will help the students to rapidly address reading skills gaps and navigate their way through specifically designed online software to help them make rapid reading progress. This takes place in small groups during Reading School time each morning.
Atticus – within our ‘Atticus’ groups we are aiming for what you might call total comprehension around the novel, as students develop their knowledge, vocabulary, and cultural awareness as they read. Much like the calm but enquiring mind of Atticus Finch in Harper Lee’s 20th century classic ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’, students think about their uncertainties and perhaps head towards a point of directing their own questions within the group setting. This is reading for pleasure, but our students are now fully fledged questioners, they are enticed, delighted but also challenged with each turn of the page. There is one Atticus Reading School group for each year group from 9-11.
What are we reading this term – Autumn Term 2024
Our Year 9 groups will be reading three different novels this term, ‘Rat’ by Patrice Lawrence, ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time’ by Mark Haddon and ‘Noughts and Crosses’ by Malorie Blackman. All students will get to read each novel at some point in the academic year. ‘Rat’ tells the story of young Al, a teenager with a mum in trouble with the police and a next-door neighbour who hates his guts. A story about loneliness, community, and revenge. ‘Curious Incident’ is a modern classic told through the eyes of an autistic teenage boy called Christopher, who has witnessed a terrible crime. It is inventive, funny and sad all at the same time and was turned into a world-famous National Theatre stage play. ‘Noughts and Crosses’ is what you might call a reverse-dystopian story, with GCSE novelist Blackman re-writing recent history and racial relations of the 20th century to ask readers to question – what if the shoe was on the other foot? It was recently turned into a successful BBC TV series.
Our Year 10 groups this autumn term will be reading ‘Crossing the Line’ by Tia Fisher and ‘When Shadows Fall’ by Sita Brahmachari. ‘Crossing the Line’ is perhaps unlike any novel the students will have encountered before, as it tells in verse the story of Erik, a young man whose school life is going from bad to worse. Catching the attention of a local gang, he soon realises that a small favour has become a huge debt, putting his life and the lives of his family in peril. ‘When Shadows Fall’ tells the story of Kai who having suffered a huge loss in his family struggles to come to terms with his grief. His friends feel like he is slipping away before they decide to help him find his way back.
Our Year 11 groups will be reading ‘The Wolf Road’ by Richard Lambert and ‘One of Us is Lying’ by Karen McManus. ‘The Wolf Road’ tells the story of fifteen-year old Lucas who survives the car accident that kills his parents. One memory stays with him – of the wolf that caused the crash. Forced to leave his home and live with his Nan in the Lake District, Lucas struggles to adjust to his strange, new world. And when he learns that a wild creature is killing livestock on the mountains, he knows it’s the wolf, that it’s come for him, and that he must face it. ‘One of Us is Lying’ was recently turned into a successful Netflix TV series, and tells the story of a seemingly normal afternoon in high-school detention that turns sinister. Yale hopeful Bronwyn has never publicly broken a rule. Sports star Cooper only knows what he’s doing in the baseball diamond. Bad boy Nate is one misstep away from a life of crime. Prom queen Addy is holding together the cracks in her perfect life. And outsider Simon, creator of the notorious gossip app at Bayview High, won’t ever talk about any of them again. He dies 24 hours before he could post their deepest secrets online. Investigators conclude it’s no accident. All of them are suspects.
Our 3 Atticus groups across Years 9-11 this Autumn term are reading ‘My Name is Leon’ by Kit de Waal, ‘Love after Love’ by Ingrid Persaud and ‘White Teeth’ by Zadie Smith. ‘My Name is Leon’ is set in the 1980s and tells the story of nine-year old Leon. He and his little brother Jake have gone to live with Maureen. They’ve lost one home, but have they found another? Maureen feeds and looks after them. She has wild red hair and mutters swearwords under her breath when she thinks they can’t hear. She claims everything will be okay. But will they ever see their mother again? Who are the couple who secretly visit Jake? Between the street violence and the street parties, Leon must find a way to reunite his family. ‘Love after Love’ introduces the Ramdin-Chetan family: forged through loneliness, broken by secrets, saved by love. Irrepressible Betty Ramdin, her shy son Solo and their marvellous lodger, Mr Chetan, form an unconventional household, happy in their differences, as they build a home together. Brave and brilliant, steeped in affection, Love After Love asks us to consider what happens at the very brink of human forgiveness, and offers hope to anyone who has loved and lost and has yet to find their way back. It was the winner of the Costa book award in 2020. ‘White Teeth’ is the most famous of all Zadie Smith novels and was her first ever book. An unforgettable portrait of London where on New Year’s Day 1975, the day of his almost-suicide, life said yes to Archie Jones. Promptly seizing his second life by the horns, Archie meets and marries Clara Bowden, a Caribbean girl twenty-eight years his junior. Thus begins a tale of friendship, of love and war, of three culture and three families over three generations.
How can Parents/Carers encourage reading at home?
- Download free ebooks from the internet. Many children engage more with reading when it’s on an interactive screen.
• Agree that video game play/social media time is matched with some time reading.
• Put subtitles on TV programmes.
• Listen to audiobooks – BBC Sounds and other websites have many free audiobooks to listen to and download.
• Read the same book as your child and discuss characters, chapters and moments.
• Let your child see you reading.
• Set a time for reading – studies show that reading a book before bed promotes healthy sleep.
• Allow your child to read a range of texts, especially ones that match their interests. Comics, magazines, newspapers and lots more are all acceptable. Reading is not just about books.
• Discuss what your child has learned during the school day and what their day consisted of – dialogue and recounting what has happened during the day helps to consolidate learning.
• To support with reading with your child at home, the following website offers a range of age-appropriate and up to date book recommendations. Simply click on the year group that your child is in and a range of suggestions will appear: https://schoolreadinglist.co.uk/category/secondary-ks3-ks4-reading-lists/
