Reading & Literacy
All staff are committed to fostering a love of reading. Our Raising Readers literacy programme aims to ensure that all St. Wilfrid’s pupils leave as effective communicators.
Reading opens doors for our pupils, and it is our aim for pupils to embrace every opportunity to become confident and fluent readers.
Through daily exposure to the St. Wilfrid’s Canon, we embed positive reading habits for pupils across all key stages. In addition to our bespoke literary canon, we also create opportunities for pupils to experience Scholarly Reading: a curated collection of non-fiction and fiction texts that enhance subject specific knowledge and a broader understanding of the world around us.
It is essential that our pupils leave St. Wilfrid’s as effective communicators. We want all St. Wilfrid’s pupils to be effective communicators and as such, we regularly create opportunities for pupils to practise their oracy skills. Oracy based tasks are embedded across all subjects and are part of our weekly PREP, Talk Tuesday sessions. The skill of being able to read, write and communicate effectively, is a fundamental part of our school’s Catholic ethos: reading allows us to explore the world, opens our eyes to different life experiences and shapes who we are as people.
Reading is a skill that requires regular practise and for those students that require additional support to gain reading fluency, we offer a bespoke reading intervention pathway. Our Raising Readers literacy programme matches pupils to an appropriate intervention. Our intervention pathway includes: specific in-class phonics support, Soundswrite Phonics groups, use of LEXIA where appropriate for the student and small adult-led reading groups.
The St. Wilfrid’s Reading Canon
We value reading at St. Wilfrid’s and have dedicated time set aside for reading as part of our school day. During Reading Time, pupils read with their tutors a selection of texts from our bespoke Reading Canon. Our Reading Canon has been designed to foster a love of reading for our pupils. The texts come from a range of genres, time periods and authors with a combination of classics, non-fiction and more modern texts written specifically for a young adult readership. The texts selected are designed to encourage discussion of the protected characteristics, British values and links to our curriculum.