Literacy

Developing literacy at Mortimer is of utmost importance. We believe that we are all teachers of literacy and that no student should have literacy as a barrier to their learning.

Our all-through school approach to reading is based on the fact every student can, and will, learn to read, regardless of their background or ability, and that every child needs to read fluently, and with confidence, to access the curriculum.

Reading for pleasure is only possible once a student has competency and, so, we strive to encourage students to have ‘reactions to reading’, sharing their views on the texts they encounter and developing their wider communication skills.

Staff support reading within their areas of the curriculum by providing explicit vocabulary instruction, as well as promoting their subject’s discrete disciplinary literacy.

We are all proud readers at Mortimer. Staff display their current reads in their learning spaces. Staff are encouraged to have conversations about their reading habits and book choices.

Here at Mortimer, we prioritise reading from day one with our students by providing and gifting every student who joins us in year 7 a book, via the Bookbuzz programme.

Literacy KS3 Form Time

KS3 students Drop Everything And Listen each week during form time and listen to an audiobook via the ePlatform library. The National Literacy Trust has recognised that there are many forms of reading and that audiobooks are ‘now firmly part of the everyday literary landscape. Their popularity among young people has grown over the past decade, with evidence showing that more children now say they enjoy listening to books’. Students and their form tutors have had the pleasure of choosing an audiobook to listen to.

There are huge benefits to students being read to at any age:

• It builds stronger brains and helps students to concentrate.
• It encourages growth of vocabulary – students who are read to hear on average more than 200,000 words annually than their peers.
• It helps to expose students to new vocabulary that they would never encounter in everyday conversation.
• It helps to increase empathy as well as showing to have a calming effect on the listener.
• It helps to create a love of reading.

Literacy KS4 Form Time

KS4 students read a selection of non-fiction texts each week from The Literacy Engine.

• One non-fiction text is read each week during form time.
• By reading The Literacy Engine texts, students encounter over 24,000 rich academic words and up to 40 culturally significant topics each year. 
• Texts are knowledge rich covering many aspects from influential people to Have you ever wondered…
• The Preload Vocabulary table encourages staff and students to discuss Tier 3 vocabulary that is contained in the text.

Past topics have included:

• Should all people be GPS tracked?
• Have you ever wondered why boxes of chocolates are getting smaller?
• Influential People: Freddie Mercury.
• Should video games be considered a sport?

At Mortimer, we believe that encouraging students to read independently will help students to be successful in school and beyond in their wider lives.

As part of English homework, all students will complete high quality reading every week on Sparx Reader. Sparx Reader enables staff to measure how much students are reading as well as the accuracy of their reading.

At Key Stage 3, students read a book that they have chosen from a selection of possible options. Students can change the font and size of the text and can use a reading ruler to help them to access the text. Reading with a ruler allows students to continue to build on the good reading habits that are demonstrated in everyday school life.

To check that students are understanding what they are reading, there are regular pauses where students are asked questions about the text they are reading. Students achieve Sparx Reading Points for every question that they answer correctly.

At Key Stage 4, students are set a literature text to read so that they become familiar with the plot, the themes and the characters of their GCSE literature texts. Students are encouraged to read carefully for accuracy. To ensure that all students can access these texts, there is also a range of ‘Easy Reader’ texts available.

The weekly Sparx Leaderboard is shared on Mortimer’s social media, to engage and promote reading, each week. Students are regularly rewarded Class Chart points for their reading accuracy by Team English. Students who have made it to the leaderboard are then entered into a prize draw at the end of each half term.