At MKA we know how crucial it is that pupils are secure in their literacy to help ensure both their ability to succeed, and their quality of life. Once our pupils are secure in their reading decoding, fluency, and comprehension they can fully access our ambitious curriculum.
At a whole school level, we promote a love for reading by providing 3 x 25 minute sessions a week for tutor groups in Year 7-10 to enjoy, and engage with, a whole literary text together, supported by Guided Readingwith their Tutor. We choose ambitious texts as our class readers, with themes which are relevant to all pupils. Each pupil will read three novels a year with their tutor, and these are carefully mapped to compliment the content of our PSHE curriculum; we also highlight and celebrate where literary content links to our MKA values.
Pupils will each have a copy of the text which they are expected to follow using their MKA Bookmarks, which outline strategies for Reciprocal Reading.
All pupils are assessed twice a year using the NGRT reading tests and further diagnostic tests are used to establish what level of intervention is necessary. These results are shared with teachers and are on both the annotated seating plans and pupil passports. Pupils who are reading below their chronological age, but not significantly so, will be assessed using further diagnostic tests to assess whether they need reading fluency intervention or comprehension-based intervention, such as through the Lexia programme. Those pupils who have not yet mastered decoding work on our phonics intervention programme follow Ruth Miskin’s Read, Write, inc. Phonics programme. Both are likely to be short-term wave 2 interventions and are designed to bridge specific literacy needs.
The needs of our EAL and SEND pupils are carefully assessed to ensure that these children receive the right level of intervention and to ensure equitable access to our curriculum. All
EAL pupils are screened and supported by the Flash Academy Programme.
Subject
Our subject leaders ensure that enabling vocabulary, including tier 2 and tier 3 words, are planned for, and are taught at carefully sequenced points across their curricula. Every unit taught is accompanied by a Key Word Bank which are in every pupil workbook. These are available also for parents on the Curriculum area of our school website. Key Word Banks are carefully aligned to curriculum content, and embedded in lessons. Every lesson pupils are explicitly taught three key words, from the Key Word Bank, that are the most important to accessing and having success in the lesson. Pupils will then demonstrate that they have understood these through their Apply and Retrieval tasks.
Teacher
Our teachers are trained in our whole-school reading and disciplinary literacy strategies and play a crucial role in identifying pupils who may benefit from targeted reading intervention.
All teachers benefit from regular CPD on SPaG to ensure that they are able to model the very best literacy skills for our young people.
We promote oracy skills and structured talk through the use of Think-Pair-Share in lessons to help pupils to articulate their ideas with confidence and eloquence.
This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Strictly Necessary Cookies
Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.
If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.
