Reading at Aldercar High School

Accelerated Reader

All students in Years 7, 8 and 9 have an Accelerated Reader (AR ) / Library lesson once a week within English. During this time, students read their AR book and take quizzes, as well as doing spelling tests and vocabulary challenges.

AR states that the minimum amount of time a student needs to spend reading to make progress is 20 minutes a day. Therefore, we offer a series of incentives to reward students who read regularly and complete book quizzes.

Parents and carers are encouraged to take an active role in their child’s reading journey by monitoring quizzes and reading progress through the Accelerated Reader portal which can be found by clicking here.

DEAL Time

At Aldercar we have also launched DEAL Time. (Drop Everything and Listen). During the first 20 minutes of the day, all students follow along with a book as their Tutor reads aloud. By being exposed to these texts and being read to, helps students to familiarise themselves with complex vocabulary, different rhythms, and patterns of syntax.  In short, reading aloud can bring a text to life!

Interventions

2022 saw the launch of two new intervention strategies at Aldercar High School: Direct Instruction and Thinking Reading.

Direct Instruction (DI) is run with students in Years 7,8 and 9 who have been identified as having a reading age lower than their chronological age. Through tailored exercises and activities in smaller groups, DI aims to rapidly improve the reading age of students to bring them in line with their expected reading ages.

Thinking Reading (TR) is a programme that is run with students in Year 10. Again, this is targeted at students with a reading age lower than their chronological and is taught on a 1 to 1 basis. Through a fine grain filtering process, TR is able to really focus on the specific issues students have with their reading and is shown to rapidly increase reading ages in a short amount of time.

After yielding some excellent results, we are expanding our intervention strategies, adding in several different levels of DI lessons to meet the need of more students, as well as opening up Thinking Reading to students in Year 7.

If you require any further information regarding reading or reading interventions, please contact our reading teacher Mr A Leary aleary@aldercarhigh.co.uk