Twitter

08/12/23

Happy Hannukah to the Jewish community. May this festival bring you blessings, peace, and light. pic.twitter.com/HySs2392ed

08/12/23

Today marked the end of our interhouse PE competitions the winners for each year groups are as follows:Year 7 - Newton Year 8 - Wallace Year 9 - Whitlock Year 10 - Tovey Overall winners - Wallace & Strike 🏆 Excellent effort from all house groups 🥳 pic.twitter.com/Aua9TwTWDm

08/12/23

Year 10 and 11 showcased their musical talent during the Harris Academy Ockendon Live Lounge event. Well done to all involved. pic.twitter.com/k7tB9qN3wR

04/12/23

English Literature Oxford university taster day, hosted at Harris Chobham, with 8 of our year 10/11 students! Students came away with even higher aspirations than before, after enjoying various lectures & seminars on different genres of literature. A thoroughly enjoyable day! pic.twitter.com/Bjt47OW3aw

04/12/23

Interhouse competitions have started this week in PE with year 8 starting the week off competing in dodgeball and benchball. Excellent start to the competition. Which house will take the win on Friday? 🥇🥈🥉 pic.twitter.com/FRrD80zAOu

02/12/23

Y11 walking talking their way through English Language Paper 2 with Impress the examiner. Students working hard on a Saturday, with English teachers to support. pic.twitter.com/SOXre5q9SD

29/11/23

As part of raising awareness around men's mental health, here are some conversation starters to support people to start conversations about their mental health. pic.twitter.com/b97Y3MXi9F

29/11/23

This week students had an assembly based around men's mental health. It was great to hear stories from staff from describing their challenges & how they approach self care with mental health. Giving advice to our students & exploring the stigmas around asking for help pic.twitter.com/LFVlh3H8B2

28/11/23

As celebrate birth of Guru Nanak Dev ji, founder of the faith, we can all identify with his core teachings of truth, love, gender equality, working hard for an honest living, meditating upon the One and sharing with others.Best wishes all for a blissful . pic.twitter.com/ED9nEwG0lz

25/11/23

We are delighted to offer 5 fully-funded places on the January cohort of our Sustain and Grow group coaching programme to parent-teachers from ethnic minority backgrounds.https://t.co/gAtXLJEYRZBook your place soon as these tickets will go fast!Thanks to ! pic.twitter.com/ijbAi0y3k3

23/11/23

Year 7 football girls in their new kit tonight. Winning both their Borough games. Excellent start to the season ⚽️ 🔥 pic.twitter.com/kPpWZoaNu7

22/11/23

Year 11 students engaging in the Harris experience independent learning day. pic.twitter.com/1RIxwUfUKs

17/11/23

Our year 7 boys football team in their new kit last night ⚽️🔥 pic.twitter.com/bqJTHPh5kR

12/11/23

Happy Diwali & Bandi Chhor Diwas to all celebrating. An important time to reflect on our internal light and darkness, as well as the events taking place in our world today 🪔🪔🪔 pic.twitter.com/j6PQh0Tjv9

10/11/23

colleagues can enjoy fully-funded 1:1 coaching with the . Choose from our Accreditation, Parental Leave, Return to Work or Transition coaching to support you as you start and grow your family. Find out more and sign up at https://t.co/pBZxdoXZwJ pic.twitter.com/GiwiuAMoO1

10/11/23

This morning our year 10 sports leaders had hot chocolate Friday with Ms Rainey to receive their certificates and celebrate their success over the last year on the course. Well done to all those who qualified 🎉. pic.twitter.com/dgxqb2w2dO

04/10/23

U13 girls have arrived for their Essex cup match at The Billericay School ⚽️ pic.twitter.com/ZqVg7WrhGx

03/10/23

🚨PE CLUBS / FIXTURE ANNOUNCEMENT 🚨 - Wednesday - U13 Essex Cup girls football v Billericay (Away) Thursday - Girls Football club (moved from Wednesday due to the above fixture) Friday - Rugby - all years (moved from Wednesday)

25/09/23

Excellent turn out for all years netball tonight! Over 50 students at the club. Amazing start to our netball season 🔥 pic.twitter.com/fte57ArKQ0

25/09/23

🚨 P.E CLUB ANNOUNCEMENT this week 🚨 - Monday - All years girls netballWednesday - All years boys rugby 🏉 All years girls football ⚽️ Thursday - Years 7 boys football ⚽️ If you have any questions please see a member of the P.E department.

Harris Academies
All Academies in our Federation aim to transform the lives of the students they serve by bringing about rapid improvement in examination results, personal development and aspiration.

Central Office

Bexley

Bromley

Clapham

Croydon

Greenwich

Haringey

Havering

Merton

Newham

Southwark

Stratford

Sutton

Thurrock

Wandsworth

Westminster

Willesden

Guided Reading

Our vision is to foster a culture of reading across the school in which students read ambitious and diverse texts for pleasure, whilst gaining cultural capital.

Students will develop the habits that enable them to read with fluency and confidence throughout their academic journey and in later life.

Guided reading"The best moments in reading are when you come across something which you had
thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone who is even perhaps a long time dead…. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.”

                           The History Boys, Alan Bennett.

 

Vision and Philosophy

Here at HAOC, we believe that the embedded weekly practice of guided reading for thirty minutes, twice per week is essential in broadening vocabulary, enriching cultural capital and ultimately improving exam performance.

According to Renaissance UK’s biggest-ever literacy study of more than 1 million children across hundreds of schools from all different demographics, exam results improved massively where guided reading was routinely practiced.

Guided reading helps students develop greater control over the reading process through the development of reading strategies which assist in decoding meaning. The teacher guides or ‘scaffolds’ their students as they read, talk and think their way through a text, completing various small text directed, focused tasks such as sequencing, text completion, scanning, skimming and inferring. 

When readers have the opportunity to talk, think and read their way through a text, they build up self-confidence as well as their own systems in the future of decoding and ultimately enjoying reading. Quality literature is highly motivating to both students and teachers. Students prefer to learn with these texts and given the opportunity will choose these texts over traditional, ‘easy readers’.

Moreover, coupled with reading eclectic and ground-breaking books, the students will also experience a diverse range of short non-fiction texts throughout the year linked thematically to the novels. These are designed to help students comprehend more challenging texts through activating prior knowledge; understanding issues such as racism, religious extremism or PTSD before encountering them within a novel.

The Curriculum

During the autumn term our scholars begin the year reading a novel that will enrich their understanding of culture, identity and diversity; year 7 read The Bone Sparrow, year 8  The Edge and year 9, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry.

Then students move on to a compelling, nail biting thriller in the spring term; year 7 read Wolves of Willoughby Chase, year 8 War of the Worlds, and year 9 the chilling and edgy horror novel Carrie.

Finally, the summer term sees them exploring prestigious, and much celebrated classic novels: year 7 Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, year 8 Lord of the Flies and year 9 Brave New World.

Immersed with the novels are a range of non-fiction texts to support comprehension through the activation or prior learning. Among others, they will read a true account of a lynching in Mississippi, they will read about Russel Brand’s crippling drug addiction, the inhuman child slave labour of Victorian England, and Nando Parrado’s 2 and half months existing on a frozen mountain in Chile after a plane crash. They’ll read a stirring speech delivered to survivors of domestic abuse, they’ll learn of the terrible trolling and bullying of Little Mix’s Jessie Nelson, about the London 7/7 bombings  and the terrible tragedy that was Grenfell.

To find out more about our guided reading curriculum, please click HERE.