Reading
“Firm foundations in reading are critical to breaking the cycle of educational inequality – and to improving the wider life chances of the poorest and most disadvantaged children.” - Read On. Get On Report
At Meden, we aim to equip learners with knowledge, skills, and attributes to be able to do something about the injustices of the world. We aim to ensure our learners develop life-long reading, writing and oracy skills that allow them to communicate effectively in school, in the wider community and beyond.
The reading policy is a key strategy for removing barriers to learning which, if left unchallenged, will limit the progress, engagement, and development of our learners. The policy aims to remove key barriers to learning, but particularly focuses on improving reading fluency.
Reading Fluency
- Accuracy: reading words correctly. This includes accurate decoding and word recognition. This enables automaticity and prosody to develop.
- Automaticity: reading words automatically. This requires reading accuracy; enables an appropriate reading speed and feels effortless.
- Prosody: reading with appropriate stress and intonation. This requires reading accuracy and comprehension; leads to variation in volume, phrasing, smoothness and pace, and sounds interesting and engaged.
Meden’s Commitment to reading:
- Staff use subject-specific reading strategies to support students in developing their reading skills.
- Students access a range of age-appropriate quality texts across genres in a range of curriculum areas.
- Staff encourage students to read with enjoyment and engagement.
How do we target reading at Meden?
Reading is targeted at individual intervention level, departmental level, and whole school level. A range of strategies are employed in each area. Please see the image below for more detail.
| New Group Reading Test Identifies the reading ages of students allowing us to target the readers that most need the support available. | |
|---|---|
| Key Stage 4 | Bottom 10% of readers across the key stage receive intervention from Thinking Reading Programme |
| Key Stage 3 | Bottom 20% of readers across the key stage receive intervention from The Fresh Start Programme |
| KS3 Peer Reading Programme | Bottom 30% (outside of the above) Trained college students work with students to practice their reading. |
| Students with SEND | Precision Teaching is used every morning as part of a reading programme. Students allocated to a teaching assistant spend 15 minutes every morning reading and answering comprehension questions. This programme may be used in conjunction with another reading programme. Students with SEND are able to access an independent reading club after school once a week for 50 minutes. |
| Dyslexic students | All students identified with dyslexia are enrolled onto the Lexia Programme. 3 x 30 minute sessions a week are completed outside of school. This is monitored by the Inclusion team. |
| Whole School - Extra Curricular | |
|---|---|
| All Students | All students have the opportunity to attend Meden School’s Reading Café with their parents. |
| All Students | Lunch Time Reading Club All students have the opportunity to attend a club for silent reading. |