If your child reads for 20 minutes a day, they will be exposed to 1.8 million words per year!

Reading develops children’s vocabulary and writing, memory and concentration and creativity and imagination. It underpins our entire curriculum, and we have a variety of strategies to support reading in lessons, alongside a range of intervention in place to support our struggling readers.

The Secondary Reading Strategy (SRS)

The Secondary Reading Strategy (SRS) underpins all English lessons. Students approach texts using specific skills and strategies to systematically breakdown vocabulary, which ensures competent understanding of the content of texts.

The English Curriculum has chosen specific texts that present barriers to students and allows students to experience a range of strategies to overcome these barriers. The barriers include non-fiction texts, non-linear time sequences, complex and multiple narrators, multiple plots and storylines, resistant texts and archaic texts.

Tackling Texts

Tackling texts promotes the strategies used in The Secondary Reading Strategy across the whole Academy. Teachers in every curriculum area frame the texts for students, remove barriers to learning, including the preloading of vocabulary and context, and complete layered reads followed by answering the outcome questions.

Available Intervention

Reading Time

All KS3 students read for the following time on a weekly basis:

Students in Ruth Miskin Fresh Start, Rapid Plus or Reading Plus intervention read for the following on a weekly basis:

GL Testing

All year 7 and 8 students sit the NGRT twice a year which produces results that enable us to monitor student’s reading and comprehension. The test is an adaptive test that introduces students to three types of questions, assessing their knowledge of vocabulary, comprehension and their ability to decode texts.

The results help us to identify areas that may hold a child back and allows us to develop the appropriate intervention. It presents accurate information that helps us support individual children and allows us to measure the impact of the intervention we put into place.

Creating a love of reading at Garforth Academy

Reading Routes

A key aim of our ‘Reading Routes’ initiative is to foster a love of reading for leisure and pleasure whilst widening the cultural experiences of our students and ultimately broadening their learning beyond the core curriculum. Students embrace the programme as they immerse themselves into a variety of different books that they previously might not have envisioned themselves reading. Whilst helping to improve their confidence and self-esteem through developing their reading skills. Reading Routes has also strengthened the school community through a shared reading experience.

As part of the nine main reading routes, students will be exposed to a range of genres:

· Comedy central

· Crime & Mystery

· History

· Adventure

· Thriller

· Fantasy

· Must Read Classics

· Humour

· Mystery

In addition, we have several specialised optional routes for our students to explore:

· Explorer

· Sport

· Development

· Inspiration/Aspiration

· Environment

Not only do our book choices encourage students to engage with genres they might not usually find themselves reading, but they will also be exposed to unfamiliar topics to broaden their understanding of the world around them. It is important that our book choices, in the form of both fiction and non-fiction books, reflect the range and interest of our students.

As part of the Reading Routes programme, there is a route map, based on the London Tube Map, which consists of 14 different routes (genres), with around 74 books in total along the routes. Each route interconnects and travels through the local area to meet with other Delta secondary academies.

We are proud that students say we provide ways for them to:

Word of the Week

Every week, students are introduced to a Word of the Week (WOW) and accompanying tasks and games, looking at alternative forms of the word to improve students’ vocabulary and access to information. WOW is embedded across all curriculum areas and year groups and includes activities including:

Literacy

Every department in the school from Year 7 to Year 13 uses a consistent approach in the way accurate literacy is developed. Literacy codes are used when marking, and books and folders are checked by departments and the Teaching and Learning Team.

During “Recall” activities, bullet points of information that students learnt in their last lesson are shared, often with some deliberate literacy errors for students to spot and amend. Capital letters for dates and titles are insisted upon, and complete their work in a PROUD manner.

The seven Deadly Sins for Literacy are taught each week and added into these activities:

Every child at Garforth Academy has access to Sparx Maths which is an online programme to support learning.  Students are set specific tasks to complete every week as homework and parents/carers are contacted by Sparx Maths when a student fails to complete their homework tasks. 

Sparx homework can be completed every night in homework club and teachers regularly review the class progress throughout the week to offer support.

At Garforth Academy, we look to narrow the gap instantly in KS3 between students who did not achieve the expected standard in Mathematics at KS2 and those who did. Any student who did not achieve the expected standard will be taught Maths in a smaller class and be offered intervention to close and gaps in students’ basic skills. The scheme of learning is adapted for students to ensure breadth of content whilst having a high focus on numeracy skills.

In Key Stage 4, students identified as falling behind age related expectations attend after school intervention and also benefit from additional small group tuition during the school timetable.

We promote our love for Numeracy by encouraging students to compete nationally each year in UKMT (United Kingdom Mathematic Trust), complete theme day activities (e.g. Pi Day) and run enrichment clubs to explore the more abstract elements of Maths.

To promote Maths outside the classroom, real life Maths activities are delivered by other Core departments on a fortnightly basis to promote discussion and develop confidence in basic numeracy skills. Topics covered include shopping discounts, deposits and investments.