Literacy is at the heart of everything we do at Dorcan. Our literacy team work hard to ensure that we provide a rich and robust literacy curriculum for all students as well as championing reading for pleasure through a range of initiatives, resources and events.
Raising the standard of literacy within the academy is a key performance objective. Our literacy strategy is based on advice and guidance from the Talk the Talk community and techniques from the current experts within the Literacy field: David Didau (Secret of Literacy) and Alex Quigley (Closing the Vocabulary Gap). A comprehensive action plan drives the Literacy curriculum delivered within the academy.
We recognise the vital role reading for pleasure plays in securing positive outcomes and opportunities for our young people. Regular reading widens vocabulary, improves mental health and provides the cultural capital our students will need in the working world. At Key Stage 3, our students have library lessons built into their timetable. Twice a fortnight, they can visit the library to relax and enjoy their independent reading books. During these sessions, students follow a bespoke scheme of learning that teaches them important reading skills such as skimming and scanning, spotting fake news and using textual clues to make inferences.
Our librarian, Ms Murphy, is an expert on children’s literature and is always on hand to support our students with their reading by assisting students with book choices and using our online reading software, Accelerated Reader, to track student progress and recommend students for bespoke interventions where it is required. Students take a STAR reading test three times throughout the academic year to assess their reading age and identify any barriers to reading and then quiz throughout the year as they finish each independent reading book. This means we can closely monitor their reading journey at Dorcan, offering appropriate reading challenges and providing support where necessary. Accelerated Reader enables us to celebrate our students’ reading successes as we can track and monitor students reading and even the number of words read. These are celebrated in termly Literacy celebration events and our ‘word millionaire’ programme.
As part of their Academic Prep, students should be reading at least three times a week and completing at least one independent reading book per term. They can do this independently or with parents/carers. For support with encouraging your child to read, please see our video ‘Literacy Building Blocks’ on our dedicated literacy website, DorcanReads.org, where you will find lots of helpful tips and resources.
On top of library lessons, students in Years 7-10 participate in our Drop Everything and Read (DEAR) sessions four times a week. For twenty minutes, students have the opportunity to enjoy a book with their tutor group. These sessions are a great way for our young people to access texts outside of their comfort zone, discussing difficult vocabulary and complex themes along the way. Students can take comprehension quizzes on these texts and our Accelerated Reading data shows that students (especially those with barriers to their reading and literacy) show a greater understanding of DEAR books than those who read independently.
As part of our focus on reading for pleasure, our staff have compiled a list of wider reading resources for students to dig deeper into their favourite school subjects. You can find the full wider reading list here on our Dorcan Reads website.
To further promote reading for pleasure, we are lucky enough to be one of the partner schools involved in the Swindon Youth Festival of Literature. Organised by our very own Ms Murphy, this incredible event enables our students to attend author talks and book signings, interschool quizzes and illustration workshops. Past speakers have included Onjali Q. Rauf (The Boy at the Back of the Class), Jacqueline Wilson (Tracy Beaker), Cressida Cowell (How to Train Your Dragon) and Anthony McGowan (Lark). Please visit the SWYFL website for more information about this year’s festival.
We love to celebrate progress at Dorcan and offer our students regular opportunities to take pride in their achievements. Three times a year, we hold a celebration afternoon tea to showcase those students who have improved their reading age, showed commitment to their intervention sessions or have made a positive contribution to reading or the library.
We believe that a wide, varied vocabulary is a powerful tool that empowers our students to express their opinions and advocate for themselves both in school and in later life. For this reason, we prioritise teaching literacy at Key Stage 3 to enable our students to approach their GCSEs with a toolkit for academic success, through explicit vocabulary instruction.
At Key Stage 3, students receive weekly vocabulary sessions built into their tutor programme. Each week, they will learn a new academic word that they can use across a range of subjects. In these sessions, students use dual coding to ensure they can spell the word accurately, know its meaning and use it in a variety of contexts. We monitor our students’ vocabulary acquisition through termly testing to ensure the effectiveness of the tutor time programme. In English lessons, the teaching of spelling, punctuation and grammar is woven throughout the curriculum. It is also given specific focus in a fortnightly literacy lesson where students zoom in on one aspect of literacy, revise their knowledge of it from primary school and practise using it correctly in their writing. Units covered in these sessions include: using punctuation to build different sentence types, vocabulary and spelling, parts of speech and using Standard English. Using a bespoke diagnostic assessment, we can closely monitor students’ progress with each literacy skill and offer intervention and support to overcome any barriers to learning.
Oracy is important for building confidence and encouraging students to articulate themselves clearly. Having access to these vital skills has a direct impact on students’ resilience and emotional well-being since they are able to explain their concerns and worries without feeling frustrated or misunderstood. As part of our induction programme, students participate in a cross-curricular Oracy and Character Workshop in their first week of year 7. Delivered by the Performing Arts and English departments, this session aims to build students’ confidence by encouraging them to use their public speaking skills to explore our Dorcan Character Values. Oracy is also woven through our tutor programme in the form of weekly Dorcan Debates sessions, where Key Stage Four students consider a range of controversial topics and in our Character programme which encourages students to give a presentation about their hobbies and talents. We are developing our students’ oracy throughout the curriculum, as students are trained in The Habits of Attention and The Habits of Discussion to ensure they are able to fully participate in academic conversations.
In their lessons, students are aware of our three Oracy non-negotiables, designed to encourage detailed verbal responses to class discussions. These are:
We acknowledge that some of our students face extra barriers to literacy and are pleased to offer a robust intervention programme to support our young people and enable them to overcome the challenges they face. After initial diagnostic testing, students requiring intervention undergo a detailed assessment of their literacy skills to identify the areas where extra support can have the most impact. From here, they begin their individual intervention journey and their progress is monitored closely throughout.
We offer support in the following areas:
Our literacy programme is centred around four key principles; it is accessible for all students, it is relevant to all school subjects and chosen career paths, it is regular both in how it is delivered and monitored, and finally it is embedded meaning that students have the opportunity to access it across the entire school curriculum. We believe this enables us to provide each of our students with a useful toolkit that will guide them through their schooling, further studies, and the working world.
For further information or if you have any literacy concerns about your child, please contact Charlie McKenna (SENCO) cmckenna@dorcan.co.uk or Olivia Jones (Director of Teaching and Learning) ojones@dorcan.co.uk.
Students are expected to apply the Students’ Literacy Checklist before they hand in their work for feedback. Best practice would see students applying the feedback symbols to their work, and to highlight their key area for Literacy support to the teacher.
Students are expected to review their Literacy feedback from the teacher and correct in green pen to demonstrate that they have learnt the rule/ pattern in order that they get it right the next time.
Check your work before you hand it in. Find the Fault and Fix the errors!
The teacher/students will provide feedback on the quality of Literacy with the symbols below.
Below is the link to the first in our Literacy Building Blocks series, Miss Keller discusses all-important reading skills and how you can help your child to build a positive reading routine.
