Reading Across the Curriculum
Reading is a fundamental skill and crucial so that you can access your learning. We work hard at King Edwards to build a strong culture of reading across the curriculum and the school more broadly, to give you access to and the opportunity to practise your reading skills across a range of text types.
Your teachers all understand the importance of regular, high quality reading and vocabulary teaching and we plan into our lessons opportunities to develop your subject-specific literacy covering academic reading as well targeted vocabulary instruction. Pastorally, our whole class readers allow your form tutors to model reading on a weekly basis and explore a range of up-to-date extracts from books, newspapers and websites linked to the PSHE curriculum.
As part of your transition process, we will check your reading ability so we can make sure you are on the right reading pathway for your needs. If you need of more support we have specific, targeted programmes that address gaps in phonics knowledge, automaticity and comprehension. These are run in small groups in a supportive environment by trained, specialist staff. For students where confidence and fluency are the issue we have a thriving Reading Ambassadors programme where our trained VI Formers are buddied up to read with lower school students one-to-one in a supportive environment on a weekly basis.
Reading for Pleasure
We know that reading daily is not only an indicator of academic success, it also benefits your sleep patterns, sense of self-esteem and gives you a greater ability to cope with difficult situations. In fact, research has shown that regular reading in secondary school helps to create life-long readers: adults who read for just 30 minutes a week are 20% more likely to report greater life satisfaction.
At the heart of our reading for pleasure programme is our school Library which is centrally located and a hub of activity. We are proud members of the National Literacy Trust and the School Libraries Association and our warm and friendly librarian and her student assistants are on hand at breaks and lunchtimes to help you find books and magazines that you actually enjoy reading.
We keep up-to-date with all of the latest releases, #booktok and #bookstagram recommendations as well as having well stocked classics and non-fiction sections. We also hold recommended reads from all of our subject areas, alongside textbooks and revision guides for all subjects in school. Our school library system Oliver even has ebooks available for you to loan if you prefer an ereader to a traditional book or want to borrow titles during the school holidays. See the link at the top of the page to access this.
Out of hours, our popular weekly KEVI Book Group meet after school to have a hot chocolate and a chat about this week’s read. We also have a Comic Book Club who look at graphic novels, anime and manga. Remember: if you have any suggestions for a new group – please speak to Mrs Lewis or the School Librarians and we will see what we can do!
