At St Joseph's, we aim to Unlock Belief in All through a curriculum that develops the highest levels of Literacy and Oracy (specifically, achieving high standards of speaking, listening, reading, writing and grammar). This means that our children must:

1. Be supported to be at or above their reading age.
2. Be able to write in formal English with a strong understanding of grammar.
3. Be able to communicate themselves fluently, creatively and insightfully.
4. Be able to understand and regularly use a variety of tier 1, 2 and 3 vocabulary.
5. Be exposed to a variety of texts (stories, poem, rhymes and non-fiction) to discover the best that has ever been thought or said.

 We do this through:

The Reading Programme

All of our students read novels and non-fiction books, as a group in reading time, for 35 minutes every day. This is led by the tutor, using the pedagogies outlined in our Reading Programme Strategy. The aim of the programme is to develop a love of reading as well as to develop student reading comprehension, taking turns to read out loud. 

Our programme of books is carefully selected to cover a wide variety of classics and best sellers that cover a range of topics, raising awareness of issues and exposing students to a a wide range of vocabulary.

The Literacy Lead will work in collaboration with subjects to review the reading programme list to foster a love of reading, to challenge all students and to illustrate our curriculum.

Reading Testing—NGRT

The Literacy Lead will coordinate testing of student’s reading ages.

Leaders will use the data and strategies created to review our curriculum intent and its implementation.

Teachers will know their students’ reading ages and provide targeted support in class using the Reading Strategies document.

Disciplinary Literacy

Leaders will develop and coordinate a whole school strategy that develops the highest levels of student literacy across the school.

Departments will plan for the development of literacy skills within their curriculum and adapt teaching to embed them.

SPaG Marking & Feedback

Every teacher will exemplify the highest standards of written and spoken language.

Every teacher will provide feedback on Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar  both spoken and written work.

In order to foster student independence, teachers will use the SPaG codes as a method of correction, ensuring students respond in green pen and reinforce the 3B4ME rule.

Implementation

We will employ the following literacy strategies throughout the implementation of our curriculum:

• Supporting students using Reading Ages, the Reading Strategies document and NGRT student reports to access texts.
• Supporting students to access reading through a package of intervention (including Hackney LIT and phonics).
• Regular learning through the medium of reading (especially via Flipped Learning).
• Fostering the love of reading & learning through the Super Curriculum laid out in departmental Schemes of learning.
• Explicit and implicit teaching of Tier 1, 2 and 3 vocabulary laid out in departmental Schemes of Learning.
• Developing writing through a focused approach on the building blocks, structures and planning of writing.
• Promoting opportunities for Super Curricular learning in all Key Stages.