Literacy
At The Bromfords School, we understand that literacy is a keystone on which all other knowledge is built. We know we have a problem with reading, which is not exclusive to our school community, but one that we are determined to tackle together. We all need to play our part. Research tells us that children should be read to up to the age of 16 year, to become confident, effective readers and interpreters of knowledge. Reading at home regularly is an important component of fixing the foundations.
We guarantee an education and intervention plan that is tailored to your child’s individual needs. We use a triage system in year 7 which includes the Hackney Literary Intervention Toolkit baseline assessment, so that we know who needs additional support within the first few weeks. Once students have their reading testing too, we can than identify the 20% - 30% of students who would benefit from additional literacy support. The packages are determined by how much lower their reading age is compared to their actual age. Once they have been triaged to the Hackney LIT intervention, this involves them spending an additional four hours a fortnight which is pure literacy. The data suggests an uplift in reading age by an average of +3yrs per student.
Other interventions may involve the Reading Leaders programme, where older students with more experience support students with their fluency. It may involve more intensive twice weekly reading interventions to check for their ability to comprehend, using a computer-based system called Reading Wise. For those requiring significant support, we have the library-based Reading Wise intervention, which is more intensive and helps those readers who struggle with decoding individual words. This involves coming to the library once a day during a non-core subject and using the Reading Wise software, which has shown impressive results for both decoding and comprehension.
We also believe that those students who are at or above their chronological reading age need to be stretched and challenged by reading texts that they would not normally access. Reading Masterclasses for years 10 & 11 focus on non-fiction texts, and using reciprocal reading to challenge them through questioning to build readers who are critical thinkers. The Tutor Time Reading intervention means that for 30mins once a week, tutors will read to their students from an appropriate text. Once again, using reciprocal reading techniques and questioning, they will be challenged to think more deeply about a text, which will help them to access the whole curriculum in a more critical way.
It is essential that we work together as a school and parent community united in this aim to make The Bromfords School a place where children can flourish in school, and become critical and analytical thinkers outside of school. This is a team effort on all our parts, and one that we are intent on winning.
Literacy Lead - Mr Keane
I started at The Bromfords School as the literacy lead in 2023. This was my first leadership role in education, but I recognised immediately that literacy was an area that required significant improvement. With the support of the senior leadership team, I set about completely overhauling the testing, intervention, and culture of reading across the school. I was strategic about rolling things out incrementally, starting with the testing regime, tutor time reading and Wonder Words. Being literacy lead means you have to be an octopus, liaising with many different faculties, to implement a cultural change to promote academic literacy and reading across the school. This was also supported by my completion of the NPQLL through the National Institute of Teaching, which was an incredible opportunity. All our hard work was recognised and complimented in our Ofsted report last year. Although the literacy strategy it is still a work in progress, and I aim to focus on oracy this year, I am constantly reviewing how we can make the systems we have in place better for our students so that they can have the best chances in life.
Mr M Keane, BSc (Hons), PGCE
Literacy Lead
For further details of our English Curriculum please click here
For Literacy Guidance from Essex County Council please click here
Tutor Time Reading
Reading is a cornerstone at The Bromfords School, and since last year we have made Monday morning tutor-time a reading focus. Every form group has a dedicated text to read, and we rotate them regularly, giving students a balanced diet of genres and experiences in literature.
The link below opens the current series of texts for tutor-timer reading, and this will expand in time to ensure that all students are being exposed to both fiction and non-fiction from a diverse range of writers.
Hackney LIT programme
Hackney LIT is a toolkit specifically designed to target lower ability readers who need additional support to access the curriculum. Those engaged with this programme in years 7 & 8 have shown dramatic improvements in their reading age, and we have worked closely with the developers to make it work for our students here at The Bromfords School. We frontload students in year 7 with multiple interventions, including Reading Wise a computer-based programme, alongside the English and Reading curriculum, so that they are learning the core skills whilst also enjoying the range of texts included in the programme.
Please click here for further information about Hackney LIT at Bromfords
