Literacy is an essential part of all students’ curriculum. It is fundamental to everything students do in school both within the classroom through disciplinary literacy and around the school through our literacy initiatives. Our aim is to ensure all students can read, write and communicate effectively. In addition to our whole-school literacy strategies, we have embedded a range of interventions to support students who need additional support.

Literacy Interventions

Whole-school literacy programme: this is the development of a reading culture at Saltash through the use of disciplinary literacy, library lessons, TEAM Reader programme, Accelerated Reader and staff promotion of reading.

Fresh Start: this programme is a 1-1 reading support programme designed to support students who did not meet ‘expected standard’ when they left primary school. It is also designed for older, struggling readers. The programme begins as a 1-1 reading programme and develops into group sessions. LSAs along with one of our reading tutors will meet with students each day of the week. Extraction will be from a range of lessons to minimise the impact on any one subject. Students in Year 7-9 will have this intervention if required.

Catch-Up Literacy: this programme is designed for struggling readers in Year 10-11. It involves fewer sessions but has also been evaluated by the EEF as successful. Students will be extracted from a range of lessons to minimise disruption.

Sparx Reader

The goal of Sparx Reader is to build confident readers through regular reading practice. This learning platform adapts to the ability of each user and offers a personalised home learning experience.

Each week, all KS3 students will be expected to achieve 600 Sparx Reader Points (SRPs) which equates to 60 minutes of careful reading. Students can split their SRPs over three nights if they wish to. Students will choose a book from a selection within their range and this will be interspersed with comprehension questions and vocabulary questions.

Sparx Reader offers a wide range of books in its extensive library and it caters to many of the emerging needs of our students, offering the ability to change text and background colours; enlarge the text and check the meaning of unfamiliar vocabulary.

If your child has any difficulties accessing Sparx Reader, please contact their English teacher.

TEAM Reader

Years 7-10 are reading every day, between 9.00 and 9.30am, with their form tutor. We are prioritising reading in this way because we know that reading makes the biggest difference to a child’s educational performance and it has so many other benefits to, such as contributing to good mental health.

During the course of the year, students will have the opportunity to read at least one fiction book from our wonderful collection of TEAM reader novels and they will also have the opportunity to read high quality non-fiction articles, provided by Literacy Engine.

The aims of TEAM Reader and Literacy Engine are:

1. To expose students to a wide range of literature and non-fiction, covering many issues

2. To improve students’ reading ability by modelling good reading practice and fluency

3. To engender a love of reading to encourage students to want to read more

Text Selection

The range of texts used has been decided upon by the whole staff body, ensuring they meet certain criteria. The books used:

Help to make connections between a student’s own knowledge and experience

Allow demonstration of fluency, pace and prosody

Present new and interesting vocabulary that is different from everyday conversation

Support discussion around character, plot or resolution development

Develop an awareness of different styles of writing

Introduce texts with increasing complexity and abstract concepts

Address issues within our local community

Promote a global awareness and understanding of important issues, as well as Fundamental British Values

Confront important and difficult issues in a supportive, safe environment

Access some texts well beyond those they could read themselves, familiarising themselves with complex vocabulary, rhythm and patterns of syntax.

These are the TEAM Reader books that we are currently reading:

• Refugee Boy by Benjamin Zephaniah
• Wolf by Gillian Cross
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
• Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman
• I am Thunder by Muhammad Khan
• My Sister’s Keeper by Jodie Piccoult
• Guantanamo Boy by Anna Perera
• The Hate You Give by Angie Thomas
• The Fault in our Stars by John Green