All Saints’ Reading Strategies 2022-2023
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:
- Provide our students with the skills and strategies necessary to develop into competent and fluent readers to enable our students to be successful with the increased reading and literacy demands of the new specifications;
- Encourage the enjoyment of books and reading so that the students develop a life-long enjoyment of text;
- Develop a critical appreciation of what they read;
- Develop research and study skills, using library and class texts, in conjunction with the Internet and other electronic means;
- To develop a critical appreciation of the writing of others in order to emulate these skills in their own writing;
- Encourage care and ownership of books.
- All students are encouraged to independently select a wide range of reading material. Students in years 7- 8 are expected to have a reading book with them as part of their daily equipment.