T: 020 8761 1426
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Literacy at St Joseph's College
Statements on Vision
Intent
Word of the Week
The SJC Word of the Week is embedded into each year group’s tutor time, delivering a Tier 2 or Tier 3 word each week, giving multiple and varied experiences of the word and working, in this way, on word consciousness. Students are encouraged to use the word of the week in their everyday subjects and rewarded with Word of the Week achievement points. Why not ask your student what the Word of the Week is, and how they might use it in a sentence?
Key Stage 3 Tutor Reading Program
Year 7, 8 and 9 tutors read a novel in tutor time, once or twice a week. The novels have been chosen from contemporary lists of novels compiled by Young Adult fiction awards such as the Carnegie Medal. The novels deal with real life issues in engaging ways. This is to encourage reading confidence and reading for pleasure. Why not read one of the reviews and encourage your student to read the recommended books that go alongside?
Reviews of Year 7 Tutor Reading Books
Reviews of Year 8 Tutor Reading Books
Reviews of Year 9 Tutor Reading Books
Key Stage 4 and 5 Tutor Reading Program
Years 10, 11, 12 and 13 are given a recent nonfiction article to read as a form. They then discuss non-familiar words and any issues raised, debating contentious topics and assessing for biases. In this way we aim to encourage development of a critical vocabulary as well as improve critical and discursive thinking.
Bedrock
Years 7, 8 and 9 are set Bedrock tasks each week by the English Department. Bedrock is a digital literacy curriculum, designed for secondary students of all abilities. Their comprehensive vocabulary curriculum teaches academic vocabulary through original fiction and non-fiction texts.
You can log into bedrock to monitor your student’s progress.
You will need your student’s access code which you can request from their English teacher.
Log on to https://app.bedrocklearning.org/
Parents and Carers Literacy Support
We will hold several Parents and Carers Literacy Support Events throughout the academic year. These are aimed at providing materials and information which will help parents and carers support their student’s literacy. These events have been well attended and reviewed as very useful. Each event will have a specific focus such as Writing, Reading, Oracy, or Academic Vocabulary.
Benjamin Zephaniah Day
St Joseph’s College will be debuting it’s first Benjamin Zephaniah day on the 6th of December 2024. Sadly, the world lost Zephaniah in 2023 and the college intends to celebrate this wonderful Poet, Novelist and Activist through reading, performance and house events throughout the day. This day replaces the previously very successful Roald Dahl Day. We hope that Zephaniah day will be even more spectacular. If you have any ideas for an event for this day or would like to get involved then please email [email protected].
Interventions
Of course, some students struggle with the transition to secondary school. We provide targeted interventions throughout the key stages, with multiple strategies in place, including teaching assistants, differentiated schemes and reading interventions. If you have any concerns, please contact [email protected].
We also run a reading club for exceptional readers who enjoy reading for pleasure. In this Reading for Pleasure Club, we read through challenging stories with no need to stop and study. We just read!
Online Reading
Please do browse this useful resource for free access to classic books. https://www.freeclassicebooks.com/
Why not start at A and just work your way through?
We recommend:
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
The War of the Worlds by H G Wells
There are many other ways that St Joseph’s College look after and develop students’ literacy. If you have any queries or concerns, then please contact:
Mr M Dench, Literacy Lead: [email protected]
- To see all students, whatever their literacy when they arrive in St Joseph's College, improve on their literacy during their time at the school.
- To be a unified staff body with a clear strategy for improving literacy.
- To be confident that every staff member can deliver a high standard of literacy.
- To expect a high standard of written and oral work from our students.
- To promote good literacy and academic success as desirable and rewarded goals.
- To have reading for pleasure as a key focus area for the whole school.
Intent
- To deliver an education which has the students' literacy at its core. We believe that every student should receive excellent instruction on improving literacy, and we acknowledge that some of the students at St Joseph's College arrive with a greater need for support, therefore we aim to provide a shame free environment in which our literacy provision is appropriate to every student, including our considerable cohort of higher achievers.
- We aim to have a truly whole school approach to literacy, in which stakeholders from multiple disciplines can share best practice and comment on the relative success of each strategy, aiming toward constant review and improvement.
- We aim to support and encourage parents and carers to partake in their children's literacy improvement.
- Our literacy strategies will have a basis in current research and will be appropriate to the ever-evolving needs within literacy.
Word of the Week
The SJC Word of the Week is embedded into each year group’s tutor time, delivering a Tier 2 or Tier 3 word each week, giving multiple and varied experiences of the word and working, in this way, on word consciousness. Students are encouraged to use the word of the week in their everyday subjects and rewarded with Word of the Week achievement points. Why not ask your student what the Word of the Week is, and how they might use it in a sentence?
Key Stage 3 Tutor Reading Program
Year 7, 8 and 9 tutors read a novel in tutor time, once or twice a week. The novels have been chosen from contemporary lists of novels compiled by Young Adult fiction awards such as the Carnegie Medal. The novels deal with real life issues in engaging ways. This is to encourage reading confidence and reading for pleasure. Why not read one of the reviews and encourage your student to read the recommended books that go alongside?
Reviews of Year 7 Tutor Reading Books
Reviews of Year 8 Tutor Reading Books
Reviews of Year 9 Tutor Reading Books
Key Stage 4 and 5 Tutor Reading Program
Years 10, 11, 12 and 13 are given a recent nonfiction article to read as a form. They then discuss non-familiar words and any issues raised, debating contentious topics and assessing for biases. In this way we aim to encourage development of a critical vocabulary as well as improve critical and discursive thinking.
Bedrock
Years 7, 8 and 9 are set Bedrock tasks each week by the English Department. Bedrock is a digital literacy curriculum, designed for secondary students of all abilities. Their comprehensive vocabulary curriculum teaches academic vocabulary through original fiction and non-fiction texts.
You can log into bedrock to monitor your student’s progress.
You will need your student’s access code which you can request from their English teacher.
Log on to https://app.bedrocklearning.org/
Parents and Carers Literacy Support
We will hold several Parents and Carers Literacy Support Events throughout the academic year. These are aimed at providing materials and information which will help parents and carers support their student’s literacy. These events have been well attended and reviewed as very useful. Each event will have a specific focus such as Writing, Reading, Oracy, or Academic Vocabulary.
Benjamin Zephaniah Day
St Joseph’s College will be debuting it’s first Benjamin Zephaniah day on the 6th of December 2024. Sadly, the world lost Zephaniah in 2023 and the college intends to celebrate this wonderful Poet, Novelist and Activist through reading, performance and house events throughout the day. This day replaces the previously very successful Roald Dahl Day. We hope that Zephaniah day will be even more spectacular. If you have any ideas for an event for this day or would like to get involved then please email [email protected].
Interventions
Of course, some students struggle with the transition to secondary school. We provide targeted interventions throughout the key stages, with multiple strategies in place, including teaching assistants, differentiated schemes and reading interventions. If you have any concerns, please contact [email protected].
We also run a reading club for exceptional readers who enjoy reading for pleasure. In this Reading for Pleasure Club, we read through challenging stories with no need to stop and study. We just read!
Online Reading
Please do browse this useful resource for free access to classic books. https://www.freeclassicebooks.com/
Why not start at A and just work your way through?
We recommend:
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
The War of the Worlds by H G Wells
There are many other ways that St Joseph’s College look after and develop students’ literacy. If you have any queries or concerns, then please contact:
Mr M Dench, Literacy Lead: [email protected]
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