Reading Programmes
Our Reading Culture
At The Hathershaw College we know and understand the benefits and values of engaging with a range of reading materials and foci: whether that is reading for pleasure, academic purpose or simply general knowledge and information finding. We believe it is our responsibility to instil, foster and promote a love of reading in all our students by providing a range of reading opportunities. Reading is the way we find out about, not only the world around us, but ourselves and others as well. We want our students to be curious and question the actions, decisions and rationale of contemporary and historical figures; to understand the experiences, influences, bias, perspectives and contexts of individuals we might only have the opportunity to meet through the written word. For students to be able to do this they need to be able to interpret and comprehend texts correctly as well as enjoy them. Here are some of the ways we endeavour to create a reading culture at The Hathershaw College:
Home Room Reading
From Year 7, pupils are placed in a home room with students of the same or similar reading ability, where they will read with their home tutor an appropriately challenging text. This not only provides nearly an extra hour of reading time a week, but also an opportunity to really engage with a book that is not being read for a curriculum outcome and therefore promote the idea of simply reading for pleasure. Home room reading continues through Key Stage 3, with the aim that all students will have read an extra 9 books for pleasure by the time they reach Year 10.
Class Readers
To further enhance the idea of reading for pleasure, the English department also have timetabled lessons where students read the same text together, led by their English teacher, improving on their reading and inference skills and again providing an opportunity to immerse the students in a book simply for pleasure. The class reader texts are carefully chosen in order to expose the students to a broad range of genres, contexts and contents.
Get caught reading
Our aim is to foster a culture of reading: to create an environment where taking the opportunity to read at break and lunch is an embedded and recognised occurrence. It is to this end that students who are ‘caught reading’ on their break and lunch will receive E-praise points that they can put towards and use at the E-praise shop … perhaps on a book!
Drop Everything and Listen opportunities
Linked to activities related to World Book Day, staff also play a huge part in creating and promoting a reading culture at The Hathershaw College. This is a chance for students to listen to and engage in dialogue with their teachers about books that have had an impact on them and the reasons why. Staff choose a book that holds some personal significance to them to read an extract from to their class, explaining their reasons for choosing the book and extract. This will subsequently elicit conversations with students about books that have impacted them and ultimately celebrating a reading culture.
The Library
The library is a natural hub for readers, but at The Hathershaw College our aim is to encourage all students to access the facility. This is enabled by staff promoting the benefits of the library along with providing opportunities in lessons for students to attend and use the facilities. Through our Heritage library management system, students can browse available books and even access texts held across the Trust. If there is a particular book that students want to read, our librarian can usually source it. Book lists of recommended reading material are published online and tweeted about while the librarian organises competitions, book reviews and reading activities for students to engage with throughout the year.
Sparx Reader
In the English faculty, all students access Sparx Reader as part of their weekly homework. Sparx Reader is an online platform which allows students to easily choose and read books which are appropriate for their reading ability. Regular reading is essential for developing confidence in reading ability and comprehension, which will support students in all areas of the wider school curriculum. Developing a reading habit, and with is a love of reading, is the core aim of Sparx Reader.
How we support your child to read at school
We appreciate that some students find reading difficult, and may need extra support to ensure that they are confident enough in their reading to access the curriculum in all of their subjects. Here are some of the reading interventions we offer:
NGRT reading age testing
All students from years 7 – 10 are regularly tested using the NGRT reading age test, which gives an approximate ‘reading age’ and helps us to diagnose potential gaps in reading. This allows us to support students by making sure that they can access the specific intervention they require. For most students, improvement in reading age, fluency and comprehension will come through regular reading practice at home.
Reading Buddies
In partnership with Oldham Sixth Form College, we offer a Reading Buddies programme whereby a small group of students in Years 7 and 8 are paired with a student who will read with them once a week in the library during home room time in the morning. This gives students an opportunity to read aloud, getting support with their reading confidence, fluency and comprehension.
Reading Fluency Intervention
To support students who need to develop their fluency, we run an eight-week reading fluency programme for students in Years 7 and 8. These students meet twice a week for half an hour to practice choral and echo reading, leading to improved comprehension and inference.
Fresh Start
Fresh Start is a phonics programme for students who may have gaps in their ability to decode words. The programme is implemented through a prescriptive course, delivered by one of our two expert reading intervention tutors. Students may be taught one to one, then in groups of 4-6 as they progress through the programme. Students receive 5 hours of intervention over the two week timetable, during the school day. Phonics approaches have consistently been found to be effective in supporting readers master the basics of reading. Fresh Start provides an opportunity for those students who need it to receive further teaching in the fundamental basics of phonics to ensure progress is made and develop students' confidence.
Bedrock
Bedrock is an online platform that is designed to help students to extend, learn and develop important academic vocabulary. Students in the foundation learning groups at Key Stage Three have a weekly Bedrock lesson. Research has shown that there is a direct correlation between a student’s vocabulary size and their academic achievement. Students with a wider vocabulary make faster progress at school, in further education and beyond.
The embedding of these reading initiatives are used to provide success in the form of improved reading ages, improved communication skills and a clear and evident reading culture, which, will in turn, improve life chances for our students.
How you can support your child to read at home
“Children who are supported in their reading at home are more likely to enjoy reading and tend to achieve more highly at school” - Department for Education (DfE)
DfE Research on reading for pleasure
At The Hathershaw College we firmly believe that reading is the key to every student’s future success. Research has proven that students whose parents read regularly out loud to them regularly hear between hundreds of thousands to over one million more words than their classmates who are not read to. Reading to children improves their cognitive development and ability to think and understand.
Learning to read helps ensure children's future success
Some of the many benefits of reading are:
- Readers have broader vocabularies
- Reading can boost maths scores
- Reading can reduce stress
- Reading improves self-confidence
- Fiction readers are more empathetic
- Good readers earn more
The Hathershaw College recognises that as parents you want the best for your children, but that work and everyday life can sometimes make our best intentions difficult to implement. So, we have provided some strategies that fit easily into your home life that allow us to work together to provide reading opportunities for your children and ultimately improve their life chances.
Read to your child(ren)
Reading to children exposes them to richer vocabulary than they usually hear from the adults who speak to them, and can have positive impacts on their language, intelligence, and later literacy achievement. What should you read to them? There are so many wonderful children’s books. Visit your local library, and you can get an armful of adventure. If a parent or caregiver can’t read or can’t read English, there are alternatives, such as using audiobooks; but for those who can, reading a book or story to a child is a great, easy way to advance literacy skills.
Listen to your child read
When your child starts bringing books home from school, have them read to you. If it doesn’t sound good (there are mistakes, reading sounds 'choppy'), have them read it again. Alternatively, read it to them to model how it should sound and then have them try to copy the way it sounds. Studies show that this kind of repeated oral reading makes students better readers, even when it is done at home.
Ask questions
When your child reads, encourage them to retell you the story or information. If it’s a story, ask who it was about and what happened. If it’s an informational text, have your child explain what it was about and how it was organised, or what its parts were. Reading is not just sounding out words, but thinking about and remembering ideas and events. Improving reading comprehension skills early will prepare your child for feeling confident when reading more difficult texts.
Make reading a regular activity in your home
Make reading a part of your daily life, something you do together and children will learn to enjoy it. Set aside some time when the family can come together, when nobody is watching television or
using a device, and just read. Make it fun, too. If you finish reading a book that has been made into a film, watch the film together.
Helping your child to find a book they will love
There are many external sources you can use to help support your child’s reading:
11 ways parents can help their child read
The DfES have produced the booklet: ‘Help your children to learn: A GUIDE TO SUPPORTING READING FOR PARENTS OF SECONDARY SCHOOL CHILDREN’ which can be found at: A guide to supporting reading for parents of secondary school children
This provides further information on the benefits of encouraging and helping your child to read, along with easy to implement and useful strategies.
Children are much more likely to enjoy reading if they are able to find books which are both accessible to their reading level and appeal to their interests. Our librarian at Hathershaw can recommend books, but you can also access the expertise and books stock of your local library: https://www.oldham.gov.uk/info/200395/find_a_library
Sometimes it can be daunting knowing which books to choose, but fortunately there are always recommendations available. ‘The School Reading List’ provides information about a whole range of books, organised by age and genre.
For students who are not natural readers, who may struggle to find books they can access which are still interesting for them, the English and Media Centre has put together a list of 60 books for reluctant readers.
The Library
How the library works
The Hathershaw College Library is a calm and tranquil reading environment for students and staff who attend the Hathershaw college. It is a bright room, which overlooks the peace garden, where you can lose yourself in one of the hundreds of books that the library has to offer. Students can come in and choose a book, check it out with the Librarian and they will get the book for two weeks.
If after two weeks they are still reading it, they can request more time. This time is usually granted, unless another student has reserved the book.
There is a book recommendations jar where students can suggest books they would like to see in the library and there is an up and coming book review folder, where students can have a look through to see what their peers have read and recommended. Although the library is calm and tranquil, there is always lots going on, there are different clubs every lunchtime and activities such as colouring or word searches to be completed. There is always a competition running too where students can win e-praise points or other prizes. We also have author visits and as we are part of the Pinnacle Learning Trust, we often take students to OSFC to participate in their author visits where students can listen to the author’s story and ask them questions direct.
Lunchtime Clubs
Monday - Games Club
Tuesday - Reading Club
Wednesday - Homework Club
Thursday - Writing Club
Friday - Wellbeing Club
What resources are available?
There are seven computers in the library. This is made up of three touch screens computers and four desktop computers. Students can come in when the library is open and use the computers to do their homework. They can also check their e-praise and buy items from the e-praise shop.
We cater for every need in the Hathershaw library, we have a selection of all different genres such as Fantasy, Mystery, Adventure, Non-fiction, Poetry and Classic books amongst many other genres and titles. There is also a Biography section where students can learn about different people’s lives. We have an ‘up and coming’ Manga section, which is growing by the day and proving to be extremely popular. We also have books for visually impaired students and dyslexia friendly books for students to check out and read. There is always a display with suggested books, meaning that students get lots of help if they are not sure what to read.
Library lessons
All students in Years 7 and 8 have regular library lessons. Students come to the library during a set English lesson with their English teacher once a fortnight. For the first half of the lesson, they return their old book, choose a new one and sit and read. Then the teacher will take the majority of the class back to the classroom to read the book they are reading as a class and six students will stay behind in the Library and read the class reader with a bit of extra support. This is the same for every English class in year 7 and year 8.
Library assistants
Keen readers can apply to become Student Librarians, using some of the social times to come and help out in the library. This work ranges from them putting books back onto the shelves, helping students with their homework or helping to set up displays and books reviews. Some of the Year 9 students use this role towards their Duke of Edinburgh volunteering. We are incredibly proud of these students; they are real role models to the other students using the library. If students wish to apply to become a student librarian they should call into the library to pick up an application form.
