Literacy

Why literacy is important

At Edmonton County School, building a life-long love of reading, writing, speaking and listening is at the heart of our literacy philosophy.  We recognise that only with confident literacy skills can our students succeed both within and beyond the classroom.  In line with the Department for Education findings, we acknowledge that being able to have time to enjoy reading, writing and speaking for pleasure is more important for children’s cognitive development than socio-economic background.  We recognise that school closures caused by the COVID pandemic will have negatively impacted on students’ academic confidence and understand how crucial it is to ensure they are constantly developing their literacy skills.  This is not only so that students can fully access the school’s curriculum, but so they can flourish in their future lives and careers.  

The Edmonton County School Literacy Policy can be found above.

Image

On both our campuses we have well-stocked and well-cared for libraries with librarians always happy to help students look for something they might enjoy reading.  Students are welcome in breaktimes, before and after school, to come in and read, choose a book, or find a quiet space to do homework.    There are also computers where students can complete quizzes on books they have read and where we do Lexia sessions, to support students with low reading ages. Here is a link to let you browse the library from home: ACCESSIT

Image

We know that are children grow up, getting them to stick with reading can be, in many cases, challenging.  With the added distractions that mobile phones bring, it can often seem that the only thing young people want to look at is a screen!  However, there are a lot of things that families can do together to support the improvement of reading ability and enjoyment – and not all of them require a book…

Model what it is to be a reader – and talk about books

Every child who goes to ECS is expected to spend 20 minutes a day reading.  If they allow you to read together, taking turns to read out loud, then that is great.  We know this gets harder the older they get – however, you can still model reading by being seen to do it yourself.

Share a book

Just because you don’t necessarily read together doesn’t mean that parents and children can’t share a book.  Most Young Adult fiction is excellent and can be equally enjoyed by grown-ups. Why not both read the same book?

Get your child to read to aloud to younger siblings

The benefits of reading aloud are widely published.  If your child is reluctant to read out loud to you, have them read to a younger sister or brother.  Although they will see it purely as being a good older sibling, in fact they are doing themselves a huge benefit, too.

Ask questions about what they are reading

You can keep them really simple: tell me what is happening in your book; what do you think is going to happen next?

Have screen free time

As a household, agree on times when nobody (including the adults) is on their phone. Then get into the habit of being seen to read and valuing reading.

Join a local library – and visit!

Library membership is free and we are lucky at ECS to be just around the corner from Ridge Avenue Library. There are also 16 other libraries across Enfield.

ReadWorks offers a wide variety of free content from across the curriculum with linked vocabulary activities (including pre-reading vocabulary work) and question sets. You can assign students texts (they receive a code to login) or you can use pdfs. They have a wonderful 10 minute topic- based Article-a-Day feature, proven to increase vocabulary and background knowledge.

Commonlit.org (@CommonLit) is a free site with multiple texts to develop reading ability. There are fiction and non-fiction texts in different genres/topics; texts linked to a number of novels (wider reading); texts to help students engage with themes; texts to show literary devices in action; and texts for different grade levels (American grades are one year lower than British years – so Grade 6 is Year 7). Teachers create classes and give them assignments from specific texts, which students can then quiz on. There is a guided reading function, which breaks the text down into smaller chunks; and a ‘read aloud’ function for struggling readers.

Readtheory.org (@ReadTheory) is another free and dynamic site to help students develop their reading. After a simple registration process, students take a placement test then are assigned short texts suited to their reading ability from a variety of genres. They then take quizzes on these texts: scores below 70% mean that their next text will be easier; scores from 70%-89% mean their level stays the same; and scores of 90% or higher will lead to harder text.

TweenTribune (@TweenTribune) is produced by the Smithsonian Museum and it has a wide range of non-fiction articles on a variety of topics. The most interesting feature is that you have different versions of the same article at different Lexile levels, making differentiation easy (the lower the Lexile level, the easier it is to read). You can also sort by grade (US grades are one level lower, so Grade 6 = Year 7) and by topic. The TweenTribune is especially strong on science, sports, animals, arts and culture (though focus is often American).

Science News for Students has news stories and features on a variety of topics, and each article has ‘power words’ (definitions for key scientific words). This how-to-use the site guide is essential reading as there is so much available. There are ‘analyse this‘ articles which explore science through data, graphs & visualisations, and There is an ‘experiments’ section with step-by-step explanations of how scientific experiments are done. They are also developing a science told through comics feature called ‘Wild Things‘. My favourite part of the site is ‘technically fiction‘ section with the science behind famous characters or actions in movies and books. The ‘Scientists say‘ feature with key words pronounced, explained & applied to ‘real’ contexts is also excellent.

National Geographic and National Geographic for Kids have wonderful science and nature-themed articles, most of which are free.

Reteach offers broader perspectives on a wide range of history topics, including on controversial or difficult topics. The subject knowledge guides are produced by experts, and include links to relevant books, videos and some free online resources.

Kelly Gallagher (@KellyGToGo) wrote an insightful book called Readicide (building on his earlier book Deeper Reading). In this book he argues for authentic reading experiences using ‘real world’ texts. To develop this, he has been doing ‘Article of the Week’ for many years, and the purpose of reading is to develop reading and to broaden students’ knowledge of the world. He has made this year’s articles and also the article of the week archives (with instructions for students) available on his website.

Dogo News (@dogonews) aims to develop youth literacy, reading fluency and global awareness through short articles on current events, science and social studies (geography/history). Its sister site Dogo Books is a forum for children to publish book reviews (moderated).

One Stop English has monthly news articles (@onestopenglish) on topical issues with comprehension and vocabulary exercises. The articles are from the Guardian, and are meant for English language learners, but would also be suitable for developing or struggling readers.