Literacy
The Withernsea High School strategy
Factors such as social deprivation and rural isolation can exacerbate the already significant challenges faced by young people in developing good reading skills and levels of literacy seen across the national picture, as outlined by the facts and figures shown here. Our community, like many others, experiences pockets of these documented disadvantages.
At Withernsea High School, we know that the single biggest gift we can give to our students and community is the gift of literacy. Not only does it open up the spectrum of academic study and success, but it paves the way for future successes in adult life. Our Literacy Strategy places reading at its core.
We have two dedicated Literacy TAs who provide 1:1 reading intervention working on the building blocks of reading through systematic phonics instruction, and then progressing into intervention groups to work on skills such as fluency and comprehension. Our classroom teachers have been trained in reading strategies and ways to ensure students with reading barriers are supported to access the curriculum suite effectively and meaningfully.
Tutor Time Reading Programme (TTRP)
All students in Years 7 to 10 take part in an extensive Tutor Time Reading Programme (TTRP), which sees them reading engaging, challenging, diverse, current and classic literature with their form tutors twice per week. Books for the TTRP have been carefully curated to reflect a number of important requirements:
- to support, supplement and develop curriculum content. Our books have links to studies in English, Maths, Science, Art, Personal Development, Technology and PE.
- to reflect and highlight important social and cultural issues such as sexism, racism, homophobia, education, morality, mortality etc.
- to be diverse and inclusive so all members of our school community see themselves represented in literature.
- to provide examples of entertaining and engaging literature, both fiction and non-fiction.
- to expose our students to a wider variety of vocabulary.
Every year group also has a 'Barrington Stoke' book. These are shorter, simpler reads, aimed at dyslexic, struggling and reluctant readers. They're brilliant books - great stories, well told, around 120 pages so they're really pacy!
A full list of the books our students will be reading across the year can be found here:
| Name | Format | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Files | |||
| Tutor Time Reading Curriculum.pdf |
Ways to support reading at home
With the evidence on the impact of reading demonstrating how overwhelmingly important it is to ensure our students can read proficiently by the time they leave WHS, it is vitally important that we have home support in this too.
Please find below a number of strategies you can use at home to develop your child’s reading skills:
- find the time to read with and to your child – this only needs to be 10 minutes per day. This is absolutely the most important suggestion on this list. It will help you to know first-hand your child’s reading ability and attitude to reading. It will tell them you value reading. It will give you both time to spend together (so precious in these busy lives we have!). It will give your child an interested ear. It gives you an opportunity to praise and advise. It will also give you time to read!
- ask them about what they are reading during tutor time. Find out what the characters are like, what’s happened so far (recapping skills are important for reading comprehension), what they think might happen next, whether they are enjoying it or not (and why), what it is like in comparison to other things they’re reading about etc.
- buy them a book that you think is ‘too grown up for them’ – children often like to feel they are being trusted with something that is more grown up than they are! Choose carefully though!!
- talk to them about your own feelings about reading. Do you enjoy it? What are you currently reading? Do you wish you were better at reading? Why? How is reading important for your job? Etc…
- put the subtitles on when you watch TV. Studies have shown that this simple act can double your chances of becoming a good reader.
- invest in books – charity shops are treasure troves for cheap books, often selling at only 50p per book!
- join the local library and take short trips there together.
- subscribe to online book platforms like Audible, Borrow Box, Kindle etc – use technology to help your child feel reading is accessible for them. Audiobooks are a great way to get kids ‘reading’ without them needing a physical book in their hand (although this helps!).
Academic Reading
Reading is the master skill of school (Quigley, 2020). It is a skill required in almost every subject across the curriculum at Withernsea High School, and much of what a student learns in each subject is communicated through materials the students read. Books, text books, worksheets, web pages, exam papers, even PowerPoint slides all contain written material that students NEED to be able to read and understand in order to learn new information, process it and apply it, in order to achieve the grades they deserve to move on to higher education and good employment.
Academic reading is the kind of reading that is important for each unique and individual subject. It varies from subject to subject, and as a result, students need to be explicitly taught how to read accurately in their different subject disciplines. At WHS, we are making a long term commitment to ensuring that teachers actively promote reading (both for learning and pleasure) within their subject areas. More importantly, we are also asking our teachers to ensure that time is spent in lessons working with and on reading skills, reading materials and reading strategies, so that students are practising these vital skills regularly, on a daily basis through their high school careers.
Our Reading Culture
We know that those who enjoy reading, and engage in it willingly for pleasure, tend to be the students who achieve the highest grades in their academic examinations, alongside reaping all the other benefits of being a good reader. Therefore it is important that we promote reading as a pleasurable activity.
We hold termly reading competitions, themed to the time of year, alongside a year long reading competition which last year was based on word counts and this year is based on book points.
Students can earn prizes and rewards such as sweet treats, badges, book marks and even Waterstones gift cards for taking part in these challenges.
We also do our best to host reading events with authors and poets throughout the year and across year groups.
We have hosted Phil Earle, Tom Palmer, Annabel Pitcher, Manjeet Mann and Jeffrey Boakye in recent years. We also promote a book advent calendar at Christmas through our student bulletin and hold a summer reading challenge to encourage our students (and staff!) to keep reading over the summer break.
World Book Day is a big event in our reading culture calendar with staff across all subjects reading an opening chapter of a new book to their classes across the day, even more competitions, and fun games for the students to engage in.