Reading
Whole School Reading Strategy
At Saltley Academy the literacy and reading journey is structured to build fluency, comprehension, and analytical skills in students, with a targeted approach that integrates literacy into daily form time and across the curriculum.
Reading is a thread throughout the curriculum, creating multiple touchpoints where students engage with subject-specific vocabulary and extended reading exercises. This integrated approach fosters not only reading fluency and comprehension but also critical thinking and cross-disciplinary understanding, supporting a holistic literacy and reading development journey for all students.
Reading at School
LRC – The LRC (Learning Resource Centre) is open for students to use in the week, which can help to facilitate the completion of homework, but also to provide a quiet space for students to read – this can be using the online library or the physical books within the LRC space. The LRC is used for one lesson a fortnight with the English department, for all KS3 groups (this includes Y7, Y8, Y9). This gives students time to explore a fictional book of their choice and read under the supervision of the teacher, and to help close the gap in their reading.
Teacher Read Poster – All staff within the school promote the importance of reading to students by displaying a Teacher Read Poster by their classroom, office or workspace; this advertises a book the member of staff is enjoying, with a brief description of the book, and would they recommend it.
Accelerated Reader Programme – At KS3, students will participate in the Accelerated Reader Programme with STAR testing during their English lessons. Following this testing, students then use their once a fortnight lesson in the LRC to close this gap. Students will complete a STAR Reading Test once a half term to assess their reading progress. Reports are generated, shared amongst the English department. Parents and carers will receive these reports in the post, to share how their child has performed in this STAR reading testing.
Form Time Provision – During form times, students will read a blurb, a short story or an extended piece of fictional text which is related to the theme of the week, or a Personal Social Health Education (PSHE) topic. Students are expected to repeat the reading of these texts to build fluency, whilst improving their pronunciation, phrasing, and prosody. Once they have completed the reading of the text, students will complete a short task which focuses on the comprehension and understanding of the text; these tasks will often focus on vocabulary, context, or more abstract sayings/phrases within the texts to help improve student understanding. In addition to this, students will also complete literacy tasks which are focused on Careers, British Values, Rights Respecting Articles, or our Outstanding Learning Qualities, which involves them reading and understanding a text.
Reading Opportunities across the Curriculum – Students will be exposed to subject specific texts during their different lessons across the curriculum, ranging from religious texts in RE, to current affairs in geography, to creative texts in art and drama. Staff are working hard to embed our Reading and Literacy toolkit, to not only use reading to embed subject specific knowledge but to also improve their reading and comprehension skills.
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Reading Ambassadors
We have a group of students, across all year groups and houses, who have successfully applied to become reading ambassadors. Our reading ambassadors play a vital role in fostering a culture of reading amongst students and promoting literacy across the school. Their responsibilities currently include:
1 – Encouraging a love of reading; and promoting it as an enjoyable and enriching activity and organising reading challenges and competitions to motivate their peers.
2 – Supporting peers; assisting classmates in their reading journey and helping students who struggle with reading.
3 – Promoting the LRC; collaborating with the school librarian to maintain the library, highlighting diverse and engaging reading materials.
4 – Leading by example; demonstrate their enthusiasm by reading and setting an example by speaking proudly about their must reads
5 – Organising and leading activities; collaborating with a member of staff to hold a book club to discuss books and important themes, as well as leading assemblies or school activities focused on the importance of reading.
By fulfilling these responsibilities, a Reading Ambassador helps to inspire their peers, strengthen the school’s literacy programs, and create a community where reading is valued and enjoyed.
Urgent Intervention and the Inclusion Department
Students who require urgent intervention – Students who receive a National Reading Screening Score (NRSS) of 76 or below has a rough reading age of a 7–8-year-old, and this will qualify them as a student who requires urgent intervention.
Following the STAR reading tests, data will be reviewed and students who have an NRSS score of 76 or below will be placed in the 7th form within their house, which is a carefully curated form in which their form tutor will skilfully guide the form through a book, focusing on vocabulary, fluency, pronunciation and comprehension of a text suitable to their reading age.
The students will then be assessed again the following half term, and if they have made considerable progress, they will return to their original form to continue in the mainstream form time programme, which still has a huge focus on reading and literacy. Students who require urgent intervention will also receive extra support within their curriculum lessons, as reading ages are shared with staff, and strategies are provided on Pupil Passports where appropriate.
Inclusion –
The Inclusion Department ensures that those students that need urgent intervention with reading are given the intervention that they need, up to three times a week in the Hive. All the approaches being adopted by the Inclusion Department to support those students that require urgent intervention with reading, is based on the latest academic research done by the Education Endowment Foundation EEF on areas including phonic awareness, decoding and much more.
The Inclusion Department uses the following phonic programmes listed below with students that require urgent intervention with reading and with phonics. This is done with students in 1:1 intervention session.
- Word Wasp
- Toe by Toe
- Direct phonics
The Inclusion Department also uses comprehension cards/rapid reading activities for those students who have low level reading skills. They read both fiction and nonfiction reading texts. It is based on their reading levels and to show reading progression, so they can access the intervention being offered.
The Inclusion Department also offers the following speech and language intervention programmes listed below with students that require urgent intervention with reading and in particular speech and language.
- Vocab programme
- Word Aware programme
Our Inclusion Department has used the Word Aware programme as part of the Developing Local Provision Project, which across the WHMAT and later across other Birmingham schools.
The Inclusion Department also uses the Lexia programme for those students that require urgent intervention with their reading. It is a piece of software that sets students work at appropriate reading levels. It levels the work for them and sets it at their appropriate level - e.g. reading a passage. It then marks it for them and then sets work that is more challenging, if they make progress or provides them with additional scaffolded work, to support them to move them to the next level, if they are not making the progress expected.
If a student is struggling with the work, it will automatically send an alert to the key worker from the Inclusion Department attached to the child, to intervene further, to enable them to make more progress.
Online Library
Click the link below to access Saltley Academy's Online Library
Your child’s login is their school email, and the password Library1. Students can loan a book for two weeks to read on a device, and students can loan one book and one audio book at any time.
Please see below to download the document or view it easier
Supporting Reading at Home
Homework - Subject specific and relevant reading and comprehension homework tasks incorporated into the Year 7-11 homework planners, where appropriate.
Online Library - We have our own Saltley Academy Online Library, which enables students to access both eBooks and Audio Books and read/listen to them at home; the online library can be found here https://saltley.eplatform.co/ . Your child’s log in is their school email address, and the password Library1.
Reading Lists - There are age-appropriate School Reading Lists, which provide guidance on the age-appropriate books that parents can purchase their children to read or access them through the online library.
