Reading and Literacy at The John Roan School

Reading intervention groups  

Pupils have been allocated to an appropriate reading group according to their reading age to ensure that they are supported, stretched and nurtured. The ‘NGRT reading assessment’. This is a standardised and adaptive reading assessment that measures reading skills against the national average. The assessment provides the school with a ‘Standardised Age Score’ and provides key insights into your child’s current reading ability.   

Pupils who need the most support will be entering a phonics programme or an online intervention during this time. If your child is receiving this level of support, you will be contacted by Ms Matei, the literacy learning coach with more information. 

We will continue to monitor students' reading progress by observing their in-class reading and monitoring their Bedrock homework. 

Research shows that there are clear links between independent readers and academic outcomes. Our Whole School Reading Programme is designed to engage students in a love of reading, building their independent reading skills over time to advance their academic and pastoral success.

Alex Quigley (Closing the Reading Gap) highlights the benefits:

• ‘Pupils who read well better access the curriculum
• Pupils experience more rare academic vocabulary, language structures and cultural insights when they read widely
• Reading influences knowledge, skills and vocabulary in every subject, in every discipline
• We ‘read’ exam questions and unpack entire complex processes from exam command words and complex vocabulary
• Reading gives us access to knowledge that gives us choices in life
• Reading can help us become the best version of ourselves’

Form tutors read aloud with their reading group twice a week for an hour with students engaging in discussion and learning new vocabulary as they read a text as a class. Our texts are appropriate for students' reading ages and they are diverse in culture, era and genre.

Comparing the engaged reading time of 2.2 million students, Kirsh found that reading for 15+ minutes a day provided accelerated reading gains. Results showed that students reading for 20 minutes a day were likely to score better than 90% of their peers in standardised tests. (National Center for Education Statistics).

Form Tutors read aloud, at pace and with fluency, novels that their tutees would not easily access independently. Thus, we are equipping students with the skills and confidence to become fluent, independent life-long readers. 

‘Read-Aloud is a unique opportunity to breathe life into texts that students are unable to read independently, so as to make those texts accessible … When you read a complex text aloud, you pave the way for students to read it themselves’ Doug Lemov (Reading Reconsidered).

Research shows that ‘simply reading challenging, complex novels aloud and at a fast pace … repositioned ‘poor’ readers as ‘good’ readers, giving them a more engaged, uninterrupted reading experience over a sustained period. In 12 weeks students made 8.5 months progress, but poorer readers made 16 months progress’. Westbrook (Just Reading, 2019)

Texts chosen are suitably challenging and reflect our school community. They are an important part of all students’ cultural capital, broadening minds and expanding horizons. Our Tutor Time Reading Programme texts are read on a rota system with students in each year group reading 6 texts across the academic year, alongside texts studied through the curriculum.

Texts Studied through the English Curriculum

Texts read with students through the Tutor Time Reading Programme

Students are splint in to reading groups according to their “Zone of Proximal Development”* and twice a week enjoy reading for pleasure as a group.

We read a range of books during this time across a broad range of genre fron=m Glee Club, Frame and High Rise Mystery to text for older readers such as Wurthering Heights and White Teeth.

“Zone of Proximal Development” or ZPD and is normally given as a range. Books in school libraries that use this system are rated by their ZPD score and allow children to pick from books within this range. These books are the ones best suited to develop their reading ability.