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Reading

Daubeney Academy recognise the real importance of reading.

Reading is one of the first skills that we are taught in school and forms a
fundamental part of our subsequent learning. Literacy is key to accessing a huge
amount of the content taught in the curriculum and fluent reading often underpins
how students can then write or speak to express themselves. Indeed, students with
lower literacy levels at secondary school will find that this impacts their learning in
subjects such as Mathematics and Science as well as English. It is estimated that a
reading age of 15 years and 7 months (GL Assessment) is needed to access and
understand the vast majority of GCSE exam papers and content. Therefore, being
able to read fluently has a direct effect on students’ ability to access GCSE content
(across subjects) and can have a positive effect on their final attainment!

What we do at Daubeney

Form Time Reading

Reading takes place every Friday for KS3. Form tutor read aloud to the students
whilst they follow in their own copies.

‘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).

D.E.A.R.

Drop Everything and Read is a great way to create fun and excitement around reading for pleasure. It sends a message that reading for pleasure is important, and something everyone should make time for. Each half term, two lessons are dedicated to reading a short story. Often a discussion based task takes place after the reading so that they can really get absorbed in the story.

Benefits of reading together:

Reading together creates empathy.
Students are exposure to countless words and phrases not found in everyday dialogue.
It creates a sense of community and belonging.
Exposure to a wealth of themes and concepts valuable for personal development.
Continuous improvement in independent reading skills.

The Faster Reading Project

This initiative was is based a study from the University of Sussex in 2015 which involved English teachers reading two whole novels at a faster pace than usual in 12 weeks, yielding valuable gains in terms of reading age .The idea was to just read, without stopping every few pages to do analysis, questions or writing. Teachers found pupils were motivated through quickly reading a whole text. It was found that reading two challenging novels back to back enabled all readers to make rapid progress.

We did the Faster Read with our year 7s and 8s last year in the summer term. Our aim is to immerse the students in literature thus facilitating greater fluency, ability to disseminate texts and to inspire an overall love of reading. We saw some excellent progress with some of our students ranging from an increase in reading age of 6 months up to 23 months. Students were very positive about the experience and thoroughly enjoyed the texts. We hope for the similar results with our year 7s in the summer term again.

Reading Fayre

At the end of the school year we celebrate reading by holding a fayre. Each tutor group creates an activity or game inspired by a story they have read as a class. Last year we had target shooting using Nerf guns which celebrated Hunger Games as well as memory card games, capture the flag tournaments and giant chess; all of which inspired by what the students and read throughout the year.

Encouraging your child to read at home