AS always, the English department was a hive of industry – and this year seems to have whizzed by even faster than previous years, with both students and staff working their socks off!

Literacy is, of course, of great importance throughout the whole school, and a reading programme was once again rolled out, co-ordinated by Ms Campbell who was helped by our librarian, Ms Griffiths. As part of the school’s plan to raise standards and improve literacy levels across the school all students in years seven and eight take part in the Renaissance Learning Accelerated Reader Programme. This allows the school to accurately assess students reading levels and direct them to a selection of books that encourage reading for pleasure within an appropriate range.

The programme is designed to raise reading levels by establishing personalised reading targets, based on an individual student’s current reading level, and encourages students to read regularly, both in and outside of the classroom. Once students have finished reading a book they are required to take a short, on-line quiz to establish their understanding of character and plot. When students achieve an 85 percent pass rate, or above, for three quizzes within their reading range they can move on to the next level. Students in year seven are taken to the library to choose books and take quizzes during their Opening Minds lessons and are also be provided with the opportunity to visit the library and take quizzes during their English lessons. Students in year eight are taken to the library once a fortnight by their English teacher so that they may choose books and take quizzes. As many studies have shown, regular and frequent reading, and exposure to a wide variety of texts, is an invaluable part of literacy development, helping students improve their spelling, punctuation and grammar and enabling them to significantly widen their vocabulary. The English department is looking to establish innovative ways of encouraging reading for pleasure that will support the Accelerated Reading Programme. To encourage students’ participation and active enjoyment of the scheme a programme of rewards has been established to acknowledge their success; these vary from their names being added to the start board in the library to being awarded a special certificate which is given out in Celebration Assembly at the end of the school year.

Mrs Grantham, subject leader, is very enthusiastic about the benefits of Accelerated Learning: “We feel that this will be a positive experience for students and have, in previous years, seen many students make significant progress,”

Our 11P1 and 11P2 groups were the only ones, this year, to take the literature GCSE so those students – and their teachers – had a lot of extra work to get through. The pupils worked extremely hard, regularly coming in for lessons after school, doing extra homework and often having private tuition at lunchtimes. During the Easter holidays Ms Campbell and Mrs Taylor organised a Poetry Extravaganza. All the P1 and P2 students gave up part of their Easter holiday to take part in a series of different activities, the aim being to familiarise them with the GCSE poems, to reinforce their analytical skills and to give them confidence in their ability to analyse poetry.

As part of the new literature GCSE, there is an “unseen poem” section where the students will be faced with an unfamiliar poem and given half an hour to write about it, so it is vital that the pupils have the skills and the confidence to write knowledgeably and with insight about any poem they are given.

It was a long and intense day, but the students responded well. Miss Campbell and Miss Taylor provided refreshments, ensuring the pupils’ sugar levels remained sufficiently high to get through the different activities! There were also plenty of rewards and prizes in the shape of Easter eggs.

The teachers were pleased at the students’ enthusiasm and were heartened by the positive comments they overheard. “Carrying out poetry activities for a full day can be daunting, even for teachers, never mind students,” commented Miss Campbell, “but our year 11s were great; they really threw themselves into it and I’m sure they have gained a lot of very useful skills. Quite a few of the students said how much more confident they felt as a result of the Poetry Extravaganza.”

  • Taken from Wolverley Whispers school magazine