Excellence as Readers (Year 7 and Year 8)

Temple Learning Academy believes that reading is a crucial life skill and investing in a culture of reading will always be one of our key priorities as a school. We regularly test students reading ages to ensure that those who need support can get the help they need. 

Why is reading so important? 

Reading builds a deep and diverse vocabulary that supports students in expressing themselves in education and in life. It opens up new worlds of experience and understanding, and  habits of regular reading  have a proven positive impact on wider academic success, emotional well-being, empathy and leadership skills and confidence in later life. In fact, a habit of regular reading is second only to strong attendance as the most impactful good habit for learning. 

We support students to experience wide reading opportunities whatever their confidence level. All students in Year 7 and 8 receive protected time for reading for 25 minutes each day during Daily Excellence. 

For the majority Daily Excellence Reading, this is a time to experience some rich and challenging texts chosen to enrich students' understanding of the wider curriculum. These texts are selected to enhance the material they study across the curriculum. For example, Refugee Boy by Benjamin Zephaniah allows students to not only read a novel from one of the foremost modern children's fiction writers but also to gain empathy and understanding of young people forced to flee conflict and travel to new countries seeking safety. By reading this text, students explore difficult topics such as institutionalised racism, prejudice, freedom, hope and inclusion. Likewise, to enhance students' understanding of the real world emotional impact experienced by combatants within World War One (and by extension, many other modern conflicts) we have chosen Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo. This important novel not only won awards for children's fiction, but also contributed to the campaign to deliver posthumous pardons to soldiers convicted of desertion or cowardice due but are now acknowledged to have been suffering from PTSD. This creates an opportunity to explore how we as a modern society are more inclusive, and aware of the impact of mental ill-health. 

For some, this daily session is an investment in building up their fluency and confidence through 1-2-1 or small group interventions such as Fresh Start or Lexia Power Up (see below). 

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Lexia

In October 2023, we introduced an accelerated reading online programme called 'Lexia Power Up'. This is for students who struggle to read fluently and with confidence in line with their chronological age. This is especially important when students reach high school age, as they need to be confident readers to excel across the curriculum. Lexia is a responsive online programme that is tailored to the student’s specific needs - as they grow in confidence, the tasks get more challenging, when they need more support on tricky areas for them the challenge level subtly drops until they are back on track. This approach builds confidence and enables students to make multiple years of growth in a single academic year. We have already seen outstanding progress from students who regularly accessing the programme, with many students telling staff they feel much more confident in themselves and that reading used to an insecurity for them in lessons. 

If you would like to know more about how Lexia works click the link below:

Lexia PowerUp Literacy

If your child accesses Lexia in school and you would also like them to use Lexia from home, please email Mr Llewellyn: llewellynt@tla.rklt.co.uk