At St. Patrick’s, we take Literacy very seriously. We aim to encourage our children to enjoy reading and also help them to recognise how important it is to read, while also instilling a love of public speaking and expressing themselves through their words.

All pupils in years 7, 8, 9 & 10 have one Literacy Form Time Session per week.

Each week students will actively explore a text on one of the following topics: Music, Film, Social Media, Sport, Gaming or Fashion. The text topics have all been chosen by pupils, for pupils to encourage a love of reading in all students. They are produced in a half termly booklet, so students have their own copy to follow and annotate. A Reciprocal Reading prompt sheet encourages pupils to become more active in their understanding of the text.

They will be asked to:

  • Predict what the text might be about
  • Question ideas/themes/meanings within the text
  • Clarify meanings of unfamiliar vocabulary
  • Summarise what the text is about

This method is known as Active Reading or Reciprocal Reading.

The Form Tutor reads the text to the students and leads the sessions.

After having read the text and completed their Reciprocal Reading grids, the form will then discuss a controversial statement. All students are invited to take part and use their voice to debate the topic. Sentence starters are provided to the students to allow all pupils to find their voice and learn to articulate themselves clearly.

 

What is Reciprocal Reading?

Reciprocal Reading is a discussion-based approach to building students’ reading comprehension skills. It focuses on developing students’ effective comprehension skills across a range of texts they meet across different subject areas. The aim being that pupils will be able to use these strategies when reading independently.

This approach works by:

• Devoting more time to reading and allowing all pupils to become actively involved
• Exposing students to “good reading” modelled by the Form Tutor
• Helping develop pupils’ interest and engagement in reading
• Sharing cross-curricular texts throughout the academic year
• Encouraging and developing oracy

 

How can you help?

As well as encouraging reading for pleasure within school, the evidence is that support for this from within the home plays a huge part in improving your child’s reading.

  • Please ask your child/children what they are reading and show an interest. This does not have to be a book, but could be a news article or sports recap for example!
  • Ask them about the article /passage they have read in form time
  • Encourage/remind them to have a book or magazine “on the go”.
  • Encourage them to join one of our book clubs.
  • Encourage them to loan books from our well stocked library.

 

If you have any questions, please contact Miss Morgan-Giles, Literacy Coordinator at school.