Literacy

Alongside our vision to support all students to enjoy reading, we also recognise the importance of building disciplinary literacy: skills relevant to reading, writing and oracy relevant to each subject.

The EEF recognises the value of supporting students to become literate within each subject. At St. Bernard’s we are committed to building disciplinary literacy using the following tools:

• Reciprocal Reading: Staff are trained to explicitly teach the reading of texts by pre-teaching vocabulary and using the reciprocal reading prompts of Prediction, Clarification, Question, Summary.
• Pre-teaching Vocabulary: At the start of each lesson, staff pre-teach tier 2 or 3 vocabulary relevant to the lesson. This allows students to understand unfamiliar words that will enable them to learn. Reading always starts with the teacher checking students’ familiarity with all vocabulary across tier 1 to 3.
• Literacy Mats: Each subject has a literacy mat which is designed to provide guidance in the accurate use of punctuation, grammar and key words within that subject. It also includes top tips for success and sentence starters. Each Year 7 classroom has these literacy mats available to support success in writing within that subject. To see these literacy mats, please visit the Curriculum page and select the subject.
• Retrieval Practice: Each lesson at St. Bernard’s begins with retrieval practice. Students are given a range of questions to prompt their memory, and this activation of prior knowledge also improves comprehension. A short selection of tier 2 and 3 key words are also explicitly taught at the start of each lesson.
• Modelling: As part of our Teaching and Learning policy, students are routinely shown how to structure writing. This includes scaffolding (writing frames, sentence starters) and modelling, where the teacher demonstrates effective writing skills as part of the teaching process.
• Oracy: As part of our Teaching and Learning policy, teachers also model ‘speaking like an expert’, which is a method of modelling high quality talk using key vocabulary and developed answers. Students are routinely encouraged to ‘speak like an expert’ in the classroom by using full sentences, including key tier 3 words. Students are also given opportunities across the curriculum to participate in oracy events that will help shape their fluency and confidence in the subject.

Our vision is to provide all students in our school community with a range of experiences to inspire a love of reading and develop accuracy and fluency in reading and writing and oracy in each subject.

Our literacy calendar showcases the literacy events at the school and the range of ways we promote reading and writing and oracy in our school community:

• World Book Day: The whole school community participates in this day by dressing up as book characters, decorating classroom doors to represent favourite books and guessing ‘Who’s that behind the mask’ in our popular ‘Masked Reader’ competition. Click here for images.
• International Book Giving Day: We celebrate this as a chance to share the giving of books on Valentine’s Day. All subject leaders are invited to choose a student who is dedicated to their subject to receive a book to help widen their interest in that subject further. Click here for images.
• Author Visit Day: Each year we invite a leading author to visit the school to conduct a workshop on writing for our Year 7 students. The author signs copies of the book for the children, who all enjoy learning about the writing process.
• Reading Zones: We have designed a range of quiet reading zones around the school to provide a calm environment for reading. Students use these zones each break and lunchtime to lose themselves in a good book.
• St. Bernard’s Writing Prize: This is an annual competition for staff and students to enter a piece of writing on the liturgical theme of the year. We invite entries in a range of formats: poetry, short story, play extract, essay, article, speech. Click here to read the winning piece.

We believe it is every child’s right to be able to read and write confidently and fluently. We have a large range of supportive initiatives in place to develop student’s skills in comprehension, vocabulary, grammar and decoding. We also believe that students in our school community have a vital role to play in developing the reading skills of their peers.

We test students in Year 7 with NGRT and re-test students who participate in any of the intervention programmes to measure impact and ensure the most suitable reading support package is provided.

Accelerated Reader

This software enables us to test the reading ages of our students and identify their reading age and ZPD (Zone of Proximal Development). This information will help us to put in place suitable support and interventions for students and recommend the most able readers for additional reading responsibilities across the school community. The system also allows teachers to track the books students are reading, how many words they are reading, and how close they are to their reading target.

Reading Leaders

Aligning with our ethos of service, we follow Coram’s Reading Leader programme to train our Year 9 students to support reluctant readers in Year 7. The programme covers 12 weeks of guided reading, where specific skills of comprehension are developed with the help of the Reading Leader. Coram Beanstalk

Tutor Reads

One of the most impactful methods of supporting fluency in oracy and reading is through modelling. Using the well-researched model of Reciprocal Reading, our Year 7 and 8 students all read a set novel with their form tutor. The novels are chosen to align with our Catholic ethos of justice, respect and service. Each week, students are read to by their tutor and answer questions that develop the skills of comprehension, and in particular the ability to predict, clarify and summarise. Our two books are the 2022 Carnegie award winning ‘October, October’ by Katya Balen and winner of the CILIP Amnesty Honour 2017 ‘The Bone Sparrow’ by Zana Fraillon.

ToebyToe

This programme is utilised by our SEND team. Toe by Toe is for anyone who finds reading difficult. This includes weak readers who struggle to decode or those with dyslexia, dyslexic difficulties or ADHD.

Ruth Miskin

We have a dedicated Year 7 and year 8 class who are taught in English by a Ruth Miskin trained teacher. This supports the development of reading and writing for students needing to boost their phonics, decoding and comprehension. Students enjoy focused support and guidance to build their confidence and accuracy.

Reading Scholars

We support our most able readers by encouraging them to lead and participate in a range of literacy related events including writing articles, participating in the Carnegie Shadowing Group and contributing to our Library Newsletters.

Rapid Plus

We use the full range of Rapid Plus resources from stage 3 to 9 to support struggling readers across Years 7-10. Students work in small groups of similar reading levels to be guided in their reading of specially designed books that feature fiction and non-fiction texts and are accompanied by a range of comprehension prompts. Students work their way through the stages and are supported to successfully reach their chronological reading age.

Reading is an essential skill for everyday life. At St. Bernard’s we encourage reading for pleasure and academic literacy. Our community participates in a wide range of literacy-based events including World Book Day and International Book Giving Day. We run a range of reading initiatives including our ‘Reading Leaders’ and we have dedicated ‘Reading Zones’ outside of the library which are testament to the love our young people have of reading, indeed our motto is ‘Today a reader, tomorrow a leader’.

There is now a considerable amount of evidence which indicates that reading can make you a happier person.  For example, the results of a 2013 survey by The Book Trust found that: "People who read books regularly are on average more satisfied with life, happier, and more likely to think that the things they do in life are worthwhile."

St Bernard's supports reading by providing:

• A dedicated library lesson each fortnight for Year 7
• An experienced school librarian to assist students in locating appropriate books and completing online research
• A series of interventions to support readers and promote reading for pleasure
• Quiet reading zones around school
• A suite of laptops and printing facilities
• Accelerated Reader software for tracking student reading and reading ages and promoting reading for pleasure. Please use the link to access this programme from home. Please click here.
• Access to a wide range of fiction and non-fiction books
• A wide range of books to support struggling and reluctant readers
• A growing selection of books in modern foreign languages to assist EAL (English as an Additional Language) students.

St. Bernard’s High School has a Reading Wishlist with a responsible book seller. If you would like to purchase and donate a book from our Wishlist, please use this link.

Library Newsletters