At The Pilgrim Pathways School, we believe that reading fluency is a vital component to ensure the best life chances, academic attainment and overall wellbeing of our learners. In our literacy teaching from Phonics to KS4, and across the wider curriculum, we aim to develop the three strands of reading fluency: accuracy, automaticity and prosody. To promote the joy of reading for pleasure we provide all students with dedicated time to read a text of their choice as well as guiding reading to develop literacy and enable good progress. Our curriculum aims to expose students to culturally enriching literature in order to help them develop as tolerant and discerning global citizens.
In order to support the development of reading, we provide short, timetabled sessions in each of our centres. These reading groups are planned to teach learners a variety of reading strategies which can then be practised and utilised independently when reading across the curriculum. They take place four times a week and allow our staff to assess individual need and also deliver interventions adapted to meet the needs of the young people. In all of our centres, our reading displays are interactive and are frequently refreshed to reflect reading events, national days, current favourites etc.
We believe that reading is more than just books and value the importance of young people accessing a variety of texts. We share recommendations of books between us and help with selecting appropriate texts using our reading ladders. We promote a wide range of reading experiences, such as magazines and newspapers for children, the internet, text-based games, graphic novels and comics. We also look at some wonderful, modern non-fiction texts. Below is an example of a reading river, showing the wide range of experiences that make up an individual’s journey of reading over a set time. It is a personalised list, in the shape of a river's path, that allows the young person to record all the ‘reading’ they do in a day of all varieties. We also create these rivers as a group to show our reading throughout a day or within a singular text, where we might highlight key pieces of information to reinforce their understanding.
At the Pilgrim Pathway School, we are passionate about encouraging our young people to foster a love of reading for pleasure. Each centre takes part in 'Drop everything and read' initiative (DEAR) once a week where both staff, and young people, enjoy a book of their own choice and read quietly. During this time, young people can also choose to listen to audiobooks at our listening stations with equipment that is provided by the Listening Books charity .
