Creating space in the curriculum for pupils to read and discuss their own reading choices is vitally important and helps to build motivation and enthusiasm for reading. As a school we are focused on improving students’ attitudes to reading to enhance their progress in English and their literacy skills across the curriculum.
Below you’ll find tips and advice to help your child foster their love of reading.
Mrs Lathall
Reading Coordinator
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Reading Matters Newsletter
Click on the books below to hear a review from one of our students
A key focus this year is introducing Reciprocal Reading as a school wide approach, paired with ensuring all areas of the curriculum support students ability to engage with texts in all disciplines.
The strategy: Complex and challenging texts should be read aloud by a member of staff or a competent reader within the class. Students do not need to ‘follow along’ whilst the text is read aloud.
The reciprocal reader steps can be applied to any subject area and can be modelled by teachers initially. To support students in becoming more accomplished readers, the above process can then be used to prompt questioning around what is being read.
Rationale: This will reduce cognitive load for weaker readers, as time taken decoding words can make it far harder for students to comprehend the meaning.
Clarifying key words can be done prior to reading. Again, this will reduce extraneous load and will enable to the students to engage with texts more successfully.
What the research says: Reading comprehension is highly correlated with listening comprehension (Bell & Perfetti, 1994: Gernsbacher, Varner, & Faust, 1990). For difficult to understand texts, prosody can aid understanding (Kosslyn & Matt, 1977)
General Reading aims:
Reciprocal reading is a reading practice designed to develop and support comprehension.
Students are encourage to read, talk and think their way through a text using the following skills:
Prediction, Clarity, Questioning and Summarising
Prediction—Making predictions from what is already known from the text structure and text features.
Clarify—Clarifying unfamiliar vocabulary and challenging concepts.
Questioning-Asking questions about the text using Who, What, Where, When and Why.
Summarising—Summing up the main ideas or gist of the text.
Efficient readers synthesise these strategies when reading. In order to make these explicit to students, it is essential that each one is modelled and scaffolded separately.
Aspirational Reading
The Top 50 Books to read before you leave school. Click on a title to read more about that book.
1984
A Monster Calls
A Series of Unfortunate Events
Animal Farm
Anne Frank
Artemis Fowl
The Book Thief
The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas
Boy Tales of Childhood
A Christmas Carol
Catch 22
Coram Boy
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
The Enemy
Everything, Everything
The Famous Five
The Fault in our Stars
Frankenstein
The Handmaid’s Tale
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
The Hobbit
Holes
The Hound of the Baskervilles
The Hunger Games
I am Malala
James and the Giant Peach
Kes
Life of Pi
The Lord of the Flies
The Lord of the Rings
Macbeth
Mortal Engines
The National Literacy Trust (www.literacytrust.org.uk) has several important initiatives to help boys’ reading.
The Reading Agency (http://readingagency.org.uk/) promotes the benefits of reading at all stages of life.
World Book Day (www.worldbookday.com) provides exciting and fun new resources based on your favourite books, brands, characters and authors.
