Reading at Aldercar High School

Accelerated Reader

All students in Years 7, 8 and 9 have an Accelerated Reader (AR ) / Library lesson once a fortnight within English. During this time, students read their AR book and take quizzes, as well as doing reading 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 also have 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 a variety of different 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 and help support academic progress.

 

Please click this link to see all our DEAL books from year 7 to 11

Interventions

At Aldercar High School, we are able to offer intervention at varying levels depending on the need of the individual student.

We are able to offer phonics lessons taught to students who join us, either with additional needs or with a low scaled score in reading.

Thinking Reading (TR) is a programme that is run with students in Year 7 and 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.

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.

In 2024, we will be offering intervention through a programme called Lexonic. Lexonic is designed to help our Year 11 students as they prepare for their GCSE exams. Taught in small groups, students will learn and develop skills to improve their spelling, grammar and comprehension.

Finally, we offer bespoke, short term intervention groups, where students are removed from non-core curriculum lessons to work on their literacy skills.

Since implementing our intervention packages 3 years ago, we have seen excellent progress from our students, with many of them improving by multiple points on their scaled reading scores.

If you require any further information regarding reading or reading interventions, please contact our reading team:

Mr A Leary  aleary@aldercarhigh.co.uk

Mrs S Cleese scleese@aldercarhigh.co.uk