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Reading
BackAcademy 360 is an all-through Academy and this page provides an overview of Reading across our Secondary phase.
Here you will find information about our curriculum intent, implementation and impact for Reading, as well as how we support all pupils to succeed. This includes the strategies and adaptations we use to meet the needs of disadvantaged pupils and those with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND).
Please use the drop-down menus below to explore Reading in more detail, depending on which phase of the Academy you are interested in. Each section outlines how Reading is taught, developed and assessed, ensuring clear progression throughout the Secondary phase.
Curriculum Intent – Reading
At Academy 360, in the Reading Department, we aim to develop students’ phonemic awareness, reading fluency, and comprehension. Our curriculum is designed to provide students with models and scaffolds to become increasingly fluent readers, whilst simultaneously enriching their vocabulary, and embedding the skills of summary and comprehension. All lessons follow a series of structured reading steps, to gradually release responsibility to students, and develop student confidence reading aloud.
Our Reading curriculum aligns with the Academy’s overarching goals by opening the door for students to achieve strong academic qualifications in all subjects. The curriculum is also designed so that the reading texts offer students cultural enrichment, and access to a range of engaging fiction and non-fiction texts. We equip students with the reading skills that are essential for success across all subjects, ensuring they can access and thrive within the wider curriculum. These lessons are designed to allow students in all pathways to develop their reading fluency, including the Engage, Blue, Green, Yellow, and LSC pathways, with differentiated comprehension questions for each pathway.
Reading has a unique place within the curriculum because, as well as being a subject in its own right, it provides the foundational skills that students need in order to succeed at school and beyond. The department recognises the vital importance of developing students’ ability and engagement in reading, which is why students are given access to protected Reading lessons, as well as embedding reading across the curriculum. Within reading lessons, students are explicitly taught a range of key vocabulary, including learning about the prefixes and suffixes that make up words. Prior knowledge is recalled each lesson, using a ‘Do Now’ activity, that allows classroom teachers to effectively identify and close any gaps in learning, before moving on. Reading extracts are carefully curated to increase in difficulty, as students become increasingly competent readers, ensuring that all students are working in the zone of proximal development. The topics that student's study are built around key interleaved threshold concepts. These threshold concepts allow students to build a cultural and literary awareness that will enrich their reading knowledge, making them more likely to understand the context of extracts when they are unfamiliar.
Across a range of subjects, reciprocal reading strategies are used to give students the opportunity to develop subject-specific literacy. For example, in English and Humanities, students are presented with reading accompaniments to develop their subject knowledge, while consolidating foundational reading skills. Key subject-specific vocabulary is also pre-taught across the school.
In addition, students identified as in need of extra help are given access to targeted phonics, fluency, or comprehension programmes, depending on their area of need, and KS4 students under functional reading age are provided with additional small-group support to ensure they have the foundational reading knowledge necessary to perform well in their GCSE examinations.
Impact:
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Student Voice: Students are intellectually engaged in their Reading lessons, demonstrating enthusiasm and confidence in their learning.
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Knowledge Retention: Regular low-stakes testing (through Do Nows and comprehension questions embedded in each lesson) reveal that students are able to recall key vocabulary and prefixes.
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Addressing the Literacy Deficit: Through early intervention and structured literacy provision, students develop phonics, reading fluency and comprehension skills, ensuring they can fully engage with all KS3 and KS4 curriculums.
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Reading at Age-Related Expectations: Our focus on reading ensures that, by the end of their time with us, all students are reading at expected levels or beyond, as demonstrated by NGRT data.
The fundamental aims of the Reading department are to:
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Encourage a love for reading where students show enthusiasm and confidence reading fiction and non-fiction texts;
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Provide all students with a wide vocabulary, including knowledge of how prefixes and suffixes make up words;
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Equip all students with the comprehension skills they need to be able to pick out key information from a text, in answer to a question;
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Develop the speed, accuracy, and prosody of student reading, decreasing the cognitive load taken up by reading text, and thus allowing all students the chance to excel across their subjects.
Contributing to our A360 Curriculum Intent in Reading, we contribute to our whole school intent by:
How does our curriculum cater for disadvantaged students and those from minority groups?
Students who are disadvantaged, including those with multiple barriers, are actively considered in curriculum planning and sequencing to ensure equitable access, targeted support, and the best possible outcomes for all.
Explicitly teaching strategies for reading provides the foundational knowledge that students, particularly disadvantaged students, need to excel in all subjects. Comprehension questions are differentiated to support learners with SEN. All instructions for reading lessons, including page numbers, are visible on slides to support sequential learning, and those with SEN needs. Additional reading sessions, tailored to individual barriers, are provided to disadvantaged students through Be Ready classes, to ensure all students can meet their potential. Digital learning provides students with clear access to key words, that are ‘pinned’ to their digital lesson space, to provide a scaffold for students who require it.
Literacy Skills
Students develop strong literacy skills within Child development through deliberate opportunities to read, write, speak, and listen using subject-specific vocabulary and language, enabling them to communicate and think critically with confidence.
Students are explicitly taught new vocabulary, including the prefixes and suffixes that make up unfamiliar words. Students are encouraged to link the morphology of words to their meaning, allowing them to decode an increasing range of unfamiliar vocabulary. Students speak and read aloud, ensuring they have the opportunity to develop phonemic awareness.
Qualifications
Students leave our academy with excellent qualifications that give them a wide range of choices and opportunities as they move into the next stage of education and adult life.
Providing Reading lessons for all students allows us to ensure that all students have the foundational skills necessary to excel at KS4. As many GCSE qualifications require students to read long passages of texts, the challenging reading texts allow students to develop confidence reading a range of fiction and non-fiction extracts, preparing them for examinations in year 11.
Strong Character
Students develop strong character traits that will support them to adapt and thrive in a rapidly changing world.
One of our threshold concepts, ‘Cultural Awareness’, gives students the opportunity to read extracts written by, and about, people from cultures that they may not previously have encountered. This gives our students increasing awareness of the world around them, that will prepare them to be respectful and tolerant members of society.
Physical and Mental Health
Our students develop their physical and mental health, alongside their intellectual growth.
Students are invited to read a range of topics that invite them to share their opinion on an issue, and to reflect with their peers. Opportunities for subject-specific peer discussion are protected within lessons, to allow students to develop confidence interacting with others and sharing their opinion.
Cultural Experiences and Opportunities
Students have access to high-quality cultural experiences and extra-curricular opportunities.
Students are given the opportunity to develop cultural awareness through the texts chosen. For example, students learn about rich literary histories, such as the myths and legends of Ancient Greece. Students are also invited to explore the culture unique to their area, studying “The Great North”, which gives them the opportunity to read a range of texts set in their local area.
Careers Information
Students engage with high-quality careers information and guidance across all key stages.
In PE, students are taught about sport as an industry and taught the different career paths that one can follow in school. In GCSE level PE, students attend sessions at local colleges, and have colleges come to them to deliver recruitment and information sessions.
British Values
Students have a highly developed understanding of the fundamental British Values of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, mutual respect and tolerance.
The range of reading extracts that students are presented with allows them to develop their understanding of fundamental British Values. For example, the threshold concept of “Cultural awareness” links a range of extracts that student's study about traditions, religions and beliefs from around the world, encouraging students to be tolerant and respectful to all people. Furthermore, students develop mutual respect as part of the structure of the lessons, where students listen respectfully to their peer while reading, in the knowledge that their partner will do the same when it is their time to read.
Protected Characteristics
Students have a strong understanding and appreciation of all protected characteristics, including race, gender, religion, disability and sexual orientation.
As part of the range of reading extracts students encounter, students are presented with fiction and non-fiction extracts about, and by, those who come under the umbrella of having a ‘protected characteristic’. Discussion of different beliefs and cultures is embedded into one of the key threshold concepts, “Cultural Awareness”, which underpins dozens of the extracts students will encounter in their 5-year reading journey.