Whole School Approach to Literacy
We aim to deliver a curriculum where units of work incorporate opportunities identified for the development of literacy.
Each department has carefully selected a text for every unit of work. The texts selected are used to engage our students with what they are learning and deepen their understanding. Reciprocal reading strategies are used to improve reading comprehension and provide opportunities to deepen their understanding. They include a vocabulary focus, predicting, questioning, summarising, clarifying and a reflective personal response. They also provide opportunities for structured talk and discussion. During each lesson, there is a specific focus on how the text help enhance the ‘Personal Development’ of our students.
Explicit teaching of vocabulary
We recognise the importance of deepening our students’ understanding of words so that they not only can read them, but they can say them, understand what they mean and apply them accurately in context (both orally and written). We have developed a whole school approach to teaching vocabulary using Tom Sherrington’s principles. Each department has selected a key word per lesson and time is taken during that lesson to teach that word to develop and deepen our students’ confidence, understanding and fluency.
