Reading Project
Supporting students' reading development
We know that in the transfer from primary to secondary school, attitudes towards reading can change and it can become harder to engage your children in reading for pleasure at home; the days of the book bag are over.
In secondary school, 75% of the reading we ask students to do is of non-fiction or what we might also call information texts, and so it is essential that they are reading these types of texts and, more importantly, demonstrating that they have understood what the text is about.
Therefore, we have created a library of short texts that are appropriate to students' learning in school, for them to read at home, to help their reading development.
Reading Project Library
The library consists of over 40 texts and partnering question sheets that can be accessed by clicking on the following link:
Reading Project
In order to access these resources, which are hosted in the Learning Resources area of our school network, you will need to use your child’s usual school email address and password.
We’ve created 5 questions per text that you can ask to check your child's understanding and to make sure they become confident finding their way around the text to get the questions correct. Don’t worry – we are giving you the answers too! We are not asking that your child reads out loud, or reads to you, but just that they read the text at least once (twice is best) before you ask them the questions. This is not a memory test; they must be able to see the text to help them answer the questions correctly.
The texts vary in challenge and are about a wide range of topics with the information presented in different ways; students don’t have to print them out but can read them off the screen, although it’s probably best if that were a PC, laptop or tablet screen because a phone screen would likely be too small for some of the texts that have a more complicated layout and illustrations.
Students should aim to read at least two texts per week to sustain progress and we recommend that you record the results on the Reading Project Tracker that you can access and download via the links below:
READING PROJECT TRACKER - Word version
READING PROJECT TRACKER - PDF version
A completed Reading Project Tracker can count towards a student's School Award and, if brought to us, will guarantee House points. It would be good to get into a regular habit with this, certain days or certain times to build a routine. This should be a fun activity for you to do together with your child. It should keep them reading, and reading with increasing accuracy that you can check and reward. Perhaps you might like to do some of the questions yourself and have your child test you?
Like many schools, we are always striving to support reading because we know that it is key to success at school, in exams and in students' futures; we hope this project is interesting and encourages reading.
We welcome your feedback.
Please contact Mrs K Amos (SENCo) or Miss C Hartley (Head of English) with any queries.
Thank you for supporting your child's reading development.
