Literacy and Reading

At Robert May’s School, we take care to ensure that reading is a prominent part of our daily school life. We have a fantastic Library, rewards for reading, reading tutor times and reading focussed homework in Key Stage 3. We know the power that reading can have for our students.

It is crucial that our students are strong, competent readers so that they have the ability to tackle their GCSEs for all subjects. The Maths paper alone requires a reading speed of 150 words per minute in order for the student to be able to read, comprehend and answer the questions in the allotted time. Furthermore, the academic language that is used means that students need to have a reading age of 15 years and 7 months in order to understand the vocabulary that has been used. Sometimes students have a lower than chronological reading age when they join us in Year 7. In order to close the gap, we need to ensure reading is happening at both home and school.

A lot of research has been done on the impact of reading on final outcomes: a study of 370,000 secondary school students who sat GCSEs in 2018-19 found a significant correlation between students’ reading ability and their eventual performance across all GCSEs. (www.tes.com) Therefore, we want to ensure that as much as possible has been done to ensure success for all students.

How Parents/Carers can help?

Reading, like any skill or discipline, is something that you can train in. The more words you read, the more skilled you will become at reading. At RMS, we say, ‘Read to Succeed’. To ensure your child is reading as much as possible (and therefore training for their exams) you could:

• Listen to them read three times a week
• Encourage them to read every evening for 20 minutes
• Read to your child
• Model sounding out complex words using the phonetic code 
• Turn on the subtitles on your television
• Discuss the things they are reading and ask probing questions

As well as setting your child up for the most chance of success, reading also helps build empathetic, thoughtful people with an understanding of the world around them. We know that, in this age of technology, it can be hard to get teenagers to read but the investment in effort and time now will benefit them for a lifetime. 

Reading Interventions: