Reading Statement 

Reading is at the heart of educational success and is therefore a non-negotiable aspect of our student’s academic entitlement at The Telford Park School.

Our reading policy whilst linked to our Literacy Policy will stand alone in establishing our wholehearted dedication to develop confident, capable, and curious readers.

We are fully committed to the encouragement and development of reading, not only as a key skill but also for pleasure and intellectual growth.  We fully subscribe to OFSTED’s statement “All schools should develop policies to promote reading for enjoyment throughout the school”.

Reading Intent

At The Telford Park School the development of reading skills will be given a high priority in every subject with ongoing reviews of the whole school curriculum to ensure it both challenges strong readers and supports students with reading difficulties.  This is to ensure all our students are equipped to acquire subject specific knowledge to develop a wide academic vocabulary, to encounter a wide range text types and to practice their reading accuracy and fluency by greatly increasing the number of words they encounter.

Develop a corpus of effective teaching strategies for use across all subject areas. E.g. Explicit vocabulary instruction, explicit and systematic language teaching, acquisition of background (contextual) knowledge, reasoning skills and inference skills.

Provide a coherent and cumulative reading rich curriculum to create reading as a non-negotiable – virtuous circle facilitating cumulative access to complex, intellectual, rich texts balancing fictional and informational texts.

We shall provide timetabled opportunities for reading and all students will have access to our well-stocked Library.

The Telford Park School Literary Canon will provide a wide variety of challenging texts covering a broad range of genres, cultures and eras offering the opportunity to explore a broad and diverse spectrum of themes and big ideas.

We shall build confident, curious, and independent readers who persevere with challenging texts, comprehend complex meanings, and fully access all reading required in the secondary curriculum.

Teachers will plan for and promote wider reading and reading around a topic in a variety of ways.

School staff will be trained to identify and respond appropriately when students are hindered by reading difficulties.

We shall provide comprehensive, thorough, and systematic screening to ensure all student’s level of ability is fully identified, understood, supported, and improved.

Where intervention is necessary these shall be limited to sound, research-evidenced methods which will be regularly evaluated to review their impact.

We endeavour to foster a reading culture within, and beyond, the school gates where no student leaves without a standardised score of less than one hundred.