Literacy
 |
SEND CoordinatorMs Rahima Khanam |
Excellent literacy skills are the passport to success in the wider world. Being able to write proficiently, read widely and speak articulately will enable our young people to express themselves, communicate effectively and thrive in school and beyond. Excellent literacy skills are the passport to success in the wider world. Being able to write proficiently, read widely and speak articulately will enable our young people to express themselves, communicate effectively and thrive in school and beyond."
These skills are essential to understand the world around us and therefore, the better we are at these skills, the more successful we can expect to be in life. We recognise that improving literacy can have an impact on students’ self-esteem, motivation, behaviour and attainment and that reading, particularly reading for pleasure, has a direct impact on cognitive and social-communicative development. It has been shown that reading improves health and wellbeing, as well as compassion and empathy for others. Our goal is to develop each student’s potential to the point where they are reading at, or above, their chronological age.
Our aims are:
- To ensure that standards of writing, oracy and reading are raised.
- To ensure that all students become active word learners.
- To empower students with the capacity to use language purposefully and efficiently in a range of contexts for a range of purposes, in both oral and written form.
- To increase the range and depth of literary knowledge to create a lifelong love of reading.
- To ensure that all students have undergone rigorous assessment to identify potential literacy, language and learning needs.
- To provide a range of interventions for students with identified language and literacy needs.
Drop Everything and Read
As part of our 30-minute Tutor Time programme each morning, students take part in DEAR – Drop Everything and Read. This is a planned opportunity for students to focus on reading in a calm and purposeful environment. One Tutor Time session each week is dedicated to literacy, and DEAR forms an important part of that session, helping to build regular reading habits across the academy.
DEAR encourages students to see reading as a normal and valuable part of daily life, rather than something that only happens in lessons. By giving students time to read consistently, we help to develop fluency, vocabulary, comprehension and confidence, while also promoting enjoyment of reading. Over time, these small but regular moments of reading support students’ progress across the curriculum and contribute to a strong culture of literacy throughout the academy.
Literacy across the Curriculum
We are committed to empowering students by widening their vocabulary. We understand the link between confident, fluent reading and confident, articulate speaking and students are taught several new words every day through the ‘Word of the Lesson’ to enhance our students’ ability to be effective orators and confident writers. Students who require additional reading or writing intervention are identified through annual NGRT and Lucid testing.
The English language is comprised of countless words, and it is therefore a mammoth task deciding which are most essential, enriching and helpful for students to know. Education researchers Isabel Beck and Margaret McKeown devised a tier system for categorising words according to their ‘different levels of utility’. We focus on teaching words in Tiers 2 and 3.
- Tier 1 is words that pupils pick up naturally, for example nouns such as ‘clock’ or basic verbs like ‘walking’.
- Tier 2 words are ambitious vocabulary words that learners will come across in a variety of contexts, for example reading a variety of texts or listening to a speech, but will not hear in everyday conversations. Tier two words might include: ‘analyse’, ‘emerge’, ‘peculiar’ and ‘context’.
- Tier 3 words are subject specific words which are integral to teaching a specific subject. These are made explicit in lessons and pupils are encouraged to use the language of a ‘mathematician’ or a ‘geographer’ in their writing and speaking.
Phonics at Purley
The Academy's specialist teachers use a range of approaches including synthetic phonics, to develop students' reading skills. Contact to our SEND department to find out more.
Bedrock Learning
Bedrock Vocabulary is a literacy and vocabulary app, designed by English teachers to explicitly teach students of all abilities the academic words they need to succeed in school and beyond. Using a range of fiction and non-fiction texts, the programme exposes students to language and information which not only bridges gaps in their general knowledge but also provides them with the valuable cultural capital they need to understand the world around them.
Bedrock is set as part of our homework programme for students in Years 7-9. They are expected to complete two lessons every week. As a parent, you can also access the work your child is doing by using the access code provided by the school. You can see the words they are learning each week and could weave them into family conversations to ensure even more language practise.
Please contact your child's English teacher if you would like to receive their access code. Also, please support your child’s learning by encouraging them to complete their two Bedrock lessons every week.
Oracy
At Harris Academy Purley pupils learn effective communication skills which will empower them to be able to express and articulate themselves in the wider world.
To enable structured, effective and meaningful communication we have ‘ground rules’ for class discussion that ensure students are explicitly shown how to verbally engage with those around them.
World Book Day
World Book Day (5th March) is a key date in our academy calendar, giving us a chance to celebrate reading, stories and the power of language. Each year we mark the day with a range of activities designed to engage pupils of all ages: we invite authors into the academy to lead talks and workshops, giving students the opportunity to meet writers, ask questions and develop their own ideas. Staff also share their favourite books and recommendations, helping to promote reading for pleasure across our community. To add to the sense of occasion, staff dress up as literary characters, and students take part in themed lessons and literary activities throughout the day, creating a vibrant, shared celebration of books.
Reading Material
We encourage all students to take advantage of our well-stocked library, but below are some useful links to reading material that can be accessed at home for either revision or pleasure:
- Audible offers a free 30-day trial of their audible books for all ages.
- Researchify is a search portal for finding journals, conferences, symposiums and other academic events.
- World of Stories from World Book Day lets you listen to audio versions of some of your favourite books.
- The Book of Hopes from the Literacy Trust is a completely free collection of short stories, poems, and essays.
- Literacy Trust Virtual Library has extracts of novals narrated by their authors.
- Project Gutenberg is a useful tool for locating classic texts.
- Time Edge is a digital magazine that teaches you about current events. Content is written by editors of TIME.
Our Library
The library is a community space in the school, open to all students and completely free to use.
We have a growing collection of both fiction and non-fiction books which you are welcome to borrow and take home for up to three weeks at a time. Loans can be extended for more time if needed or returned by the due date which will be written inside the front cover. If the books are looked after and returned in good condition, students can borrow several books at one time.
The library is open for study and revision at breaktime, lunchtime, and after school. We have PCs and laptops available for homework and research, and these can be accessed at various times.
There are a variety of lunchtime clubs that run in the library, and these are open to all students. Check the notice board or speak to the librarian for updates.
 |
Our online library directory is constantly updated with the books we have available in the library. Students are given a login to Reading Cloud, which will allow them to filter books by genre, see suggestions for similar titles, or even read and write reviews for books they have borrowed. |