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.
Here at HAOC, we believe that the embedded weekly practice of guided reading for thirty minutes, twice per week is essential in broadening tier 2 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 as well as enhancing their oracy skills by being able to talk more confidently about great literature. 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.