A Reading School
It is difficult to argue against how important reading is when children are growing up and trying their best to be aspirational and studying a variety of subjects at school. Not being able to read to your correct age means that you struggle much more just attempting to understand what is being said and written. When you consider that only 74% of pupils leaving primary school reached the expected level for reading in 2024, it is clear that many of those pupils will struggle to access the secondary school curriculum.
At Tudor Grange Samworth Academy, we are aspirational for every single child that is in our care and we want our students to be confident and happy in their studies. We are committed to supporting every child to read to their chronological age as a bare minimum. Reading is an integral skill needed to understand and interact with teachers and peers at school, reading is one of the strongest indicators of future earnings and the enjoyment of reading has been reported as more important for children’s educational success than their family’s socio-economic status (OECD, 2002 – Research evidence on reading for pleasure). Alongside their personal growth, happiness and accumulation of useful knowledge for their future life, we also want to ensure that they have a voice and meaning to their adult professional life.
Research
We are an academy that centres all of our practices around research. To become experts, we must listen to experts. When approaching the science of reading, we have made great steps in reading, researching, testing and discussing the best approaches for our children. This research has led to a plan to enable all students in the academy to read every day with a variety of texts and to enable them to have a specific reading lesson.
Research analysis comparing the engaged reading time of 2.2 million students found that:
- 0-5 mins per day = well below national average
- 5-14 mins per day = sluggish gains, below national average
- 15+ mins = accelerated reading gains
- 20 mins per day = likely score better than 90% of their peers on standardized tests.
National Centre for Education Statistics
To this end, we begin every day with reading. The Primary gates open at 8.20 am and children are encouraged to come into class and spend ten minutes reading before the official start of the day at 8.30 am. Following registration, they then move into a half an hour reading group where specific reading knowledge is developed in small groups with texts targeted to each child’s reading ability. Following this, children study a text together in their English lesson. We have chosen these texts to reflect the best of children’s literature from the past and present:
| Year Group | Texts |
|---|---|
| Pre School/Nursery | Where’s Spot, Dear Zoo, You Choose, We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, Brown Bear, Brown Bear What do you see, Jaspers Beanstalk, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Hairy Mclary from Donaldson’s Diary, Each Peach, Pear Plum, Hug, The Train Ride, Come on Daisy, Beat Baby |
| Reception | Old Woman That Lived in a Shoe, Bog Baby, Owl Babies, Gruffalo, Handa’s Surprise, Mr Gumpy’s Outing, Rosie’s Walk, Six Dinner Sid, Mrs Armitage, Whatever Next, On the Way Home, Farmer Duck, Goodnight Moon, Shhhh, Tiger That Came to Tea, Lighthouse Keeper’s Lunch, Pumpkin Soup, Rama & Sita |
| Year 1 | Where the Wild Things Are, Lost and Found, The Name Jar, Beegu, Burglar Bill, Voices in the Park |
| Year 2 | Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf, The Day the Crayons Quit, Amazing Grace, George’s Marvellous Medicine, The Tempest (Shakespeare), Leaf |
| Year 3 | Kindlekrax, Lost Happy Endings, One Plastic Bag, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Butterfly Lion, The Iron Man |
| Year 4 | Cloudbusting, Charlotte’s Web, The Village that Vanished, Max and the Millions, The Firework Maker’s Daughter, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane |
| Year 5 | There’s a Boy in the Girl’s Bathroom, Oliver Twist, A Kind of Spark, The Explorer, The Highwayman, Floodland |
| Year 6 | Holes, Letters from a Lighthouse, Fly Me Home, Skelig, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Shakespeare), Clockwork |
In Secondary, Tutor time starts at 8.30 am and finishes at 8.50 am. Between 8.50 am and 9.15 am, we have a 25-minute reading lesson. This falls into the category of ‘Accelerated Reading Gains.’
Each of the groups have been formed based on tests we have carried out that tell us the current reading ages. We have the following groups:
Each morning in the reading lesson, the children are read part of a novel by the teacher. For the majority of classes, the Faster Reading method is used to ensure there is no break in the flow of the reading, allowing pupils to make connections and comprehend. At suitable parts in the reader, the teacher pauses the reading and asks questions that allow the pupils to talk like a reader. Research by the Huntington Reading School has shown accelerated progress through using the Faster Reading method with pupils. During year 2023/2024, the average progress for pupils was + 3 months, with some pupils making as much as + 15 months progress.
Pupils placed in the Emerging Readers groups have a focus on inference and pupils placed in the Reading for Understanding groups are pre-taught some of the more difficult vocabulary before they read chapters.
Our stock is refreshed every year with a selection of books which are appropriate for each reading age; most of our books have won prestigious reading awards. The books for our emerging readers tend to be shorter, dyslexia-friendly books with more easily recognisable vocabulary, whereas our books for our Scholars Plus groups are challenging texts, often with strong messages for pupils to dissect and discuss.
Our reading lessons are a positive start to the day and we really want pupils to enjoy their reading lessons, appreciating the diverse stories they are exposed to.
Some examples of our reading books are:
| 1984 | George Orwell |
| A Dangerous Game | Malorie Blackman |
| A Monster Calls | Patrick Ness |
| A Tree Grows in Brooklyn | Betty Smith |
| After the War | Tom Palmer |
| An Elephant in the Garden | Michael Morpurgo |
| Animal Farm | George Orwell |
| Arctic Star | Tom Palmer |
| Armistice Runner | Tom Palmer |
| Away with Words | Sophie Cameron |
| Bad Dad | David Walliams |
| Black and British | David Olusoga |
| Blitz | David Orme |
| Bomb! | Jim Eldridge |
| Brave New World | Aldous Huxley |
| Cane Warriors | Alex Wheatle |
| Children of Blood and Bone | Tomi Adeyemi |
| Children of the Stone City | Beverley Naidoo |
| Chinglish | Sue Cheung |
| Clockwork | Phillip Pullman |
| Crossing the Line | Tia Fisher |
| Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time | Mark Haddon |
| D Dog Day | Tom Palmer |
| Date with Danger | Jo Browning Wroe |
| Deadlocked | Tom Palmer |
| Dear Evan Hansen | Val Emmich |
| Digging for Victory | Cathy Faulkner |
| Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep | Phillip K. Dick |
| Dreadwood | Jennifer Killick |
| Dream On | Bali Rai |
| Enola Holmes | Nancy Springer |
| Everyone Dies Famous in a Small Town | Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock |
| Farenheit 451 | Ray Bradbury |
| Felix | Harry Coninx |
| Flowers for Algernon | Daniel Keyes |
| Graveyard Book | Neil Gaiman |
| Gunpoint | Jim Eldridge |
| Hacker | Malorie Blackman |
| Hatchet | Gary Paulsen |
| His Dark Materials | Phillip Pullman |
| History is All You Left Me | Adam Silvera |
| Hunter’s Moon | John Townsend |
| I Am Malala | Malala Yousafzai |
| I Must Betray You | Ruta Sepetys |
| In Cold Blood | Truman Capote |
| In the Dark of Night | Edwina Shaw |
| Iqbal | Francesco D’Adamo |
| Jekyll and Hyde | Robert Louis Stevenson |
| Kensuke’s Kingdom | Michael Morpurgo |
| Lark | Anthony McGowan |
| Lights in the Mirror | C. L. Tompsett |
| Look Both Ways | Jason Reynolds |
| Maze Runner | James Dashner |
| Mind The Gap | Phil Earle |
| Miss Perregrine’s Home for Extraordinary Children | Ransom Riggs |
| Musical Truth | Jeffrey Boakye |
| My Sister Lives on the Mantlepiece | Annabel Pitcher |
| Never Let Me Go | Kazuo Ishiguro |
| Noughts and Crosses | Malorie Blackman |
| Of Mice and Men | John Steinbeck |
| One of Us is Lying | Karen M. McManus |
| Orange Boy | Patrice Lawrence |
| Orphans of the Tide | Struan Murray |
| Over the Line | Tom Palmer |
| Paper Towns | John Green |
| Private Peaceful | Michael Morpurgo |
| Pulisic | Harry Coninx |
| Rashford | Harry Coninx |
| Ravencave | Marcus Sedgwick |
| Rebel Skies | Ann Sei Lin |
| Red Card | Alan Combes |
| Resist | Tom Palmer |
| Respect | Michaela Morgan |
| Revolver | Marcus Sedgwick |
| Ronaldo | Harry Coninx |
| Running on the Roof of the World | Jess Butterworth |
| Shadow Jumper | J. M. Forster |
| Shakespeare | Bill Bryson |
| Skellig | David Almond |
| Skulduggery Pleasant | Derek Landy |
| Southgate | Harry Coninx |
| Stardust | Neil Gaimon |
| Sterling | Harry Coninx |
| Stitched Up | Steve Cole |
| Stormbreaker | Alex Rider |
| Street Corner Dad | Alan Gibbons |
| The After School Club | Alison Davies |
| The Alchemist | Paulo Coelho |
| The Book Thief | Markus Zusak |
| The Boy at the Top of the Mountain | John Boyne |
| The Boy in the Tower | Polly Ho-Yen |
| The Boy Lost in the Maze | Joseph Coelho |
| The Breadwinner | Deborah Ellis |
| The Catcher in the Rye | J. D. Salinger |
| The Clockwork Queen | Peter Bunzl |
| The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime | Mark Haddon |
| The Diary of Anne Frank | Anne Frank |
| The Door of No Return | Kwame Alexander |
| The Fall | Anthony McGowan |
| The Ghost in the House | C. L. Tompsett |
| The Girl of Ink and Stars | Kiran Millwood Hargrave |
| The Girl Who Broke the Sea | A. Connors |
| The Giver | Lois Lowry |
| The Good Thieves | Katherine Rundell |
| The Handmaid’s Tale | Margaret Atwood |
| The Hate U Give | Angie Thomas |
| The Hunger Games | Suzanne Collins |
| The Last Time I Died | Fanie Viljoen |
| The Lie Tree | Frances Hardinge |
| The London Eye Mystery | Siobhan Dowd |
| The Lord of the Flies | William Golding |
| The Lovely Bones | Alice Sebold |
| The Memory Thieves | Darren Simpson |
| The Mystery of Me | Karen McCombie |
| The Outsider | Albert Camus |
| The Picture of Dorian Grey | Oscar Wilde |
| The Song of Achilles | Madeline Miller |
| The Switch | Anthony Horowitz |
| The Tattooist of Auschwitz | Heather Morris |
| The Terror of Hilltop House | Dan Smith |
| The Tiger on his Back | Bernard Ashley |
| The Truth of Things | Anthony McGowan |
| The Wolf Road | Richard Lambert |
| The Woman in Black | Susan Hill |
| They Both Die at the End | Adam Silvera |
| Things Fall Apart | Chinua Achebe |
| Tin Boy | Steve Cole |
| Treasure Island | Robert Louis Stevenson |
| Twelve Minutes to Midnight | Christopher Edge |
| Tyger | S. F. Said |
| Under Cover of Darkness | Pat Thomson |
| Virus | Chris Bradford |
| We Can Remember It For You Wholesale | Phillip K. Dick |
| Welcome to Trashland | Steve Cole |
| When Breath Becomes Air | Paul Kalanithi |
| When the Sky Falls | Phil Earle |
| While the Storm Rages | Phil Earle |
| Windrush Child | Benjamin Zephaniah |
| Wool | Hugh Howey |
| World Burn Down | Steve Cole |
| Young Blood | Mary Chapman |
All pupils are assessed twice a year on their reading proficiency using a standardised test. For pupils who have the lowest reading ages, they may be placed into intervention groups to further work on their phonics, vocabulary or comprehension. This year, we are working with Little Wandle as they pilot a new reading scheme for Key Stage 3, as well as continuing to offer Literacy Gold morning sessions for pupils.
Of course, literature is not just studied in our morning reading sessions, as all pupils engage in a detailed study of literature in their English lessons, as follows:
| Year 7 | Year 8 | Year 9 | KS4 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Running on the Roof of the World | Sherlock Holmes | Frankenstein | A Christmas Carol |
| Alice in Wonderland | Dystopian literature | Othello | An Inspector Calls |
| Identity poetry | The Crucible | War poetry and poetry from other cultures | Power and conflict poetry anthology |
| Richard III | Macbeth |
What role do parents have to play?
Without parents this won’t work; it is quite that simple.
We really want the children in our care to value reading as they value an excellent education, the need to achieve highly and receive high quality qualifications. However, we also understand how daunting this is. Below I have outlined a few things that might be helpful for parents to ensure that you are being as effective as possible in helping your child(ren) to make the most of this opportunity.
- Talk to your child(ren) about their reading. Ask them what it is about, what they find interesting about it and what new words they have learnt. They take their cues about everything from the adults in their life.
- Talk about reading. If you don’t read regularly, think carefully about creating a routine where you and your children read. Routine helps everything work. Just before bed works brilliantly to help children become calm and relaxed and get a good night’s sleep. If you would like to speak to a member of staff about reading material or where to start, please get in touch.
- Like starting any routine, it is about creating a habit. Habits work well when they are consistent but not too demanding. Start small and build. What is the one day a week that you can call your reading day?
- Reading is everywhere, take advantage. At the supermarket, sat in traffic, subtitles on a film; parents are the real-world teachers of language.
- Keep in touch. We are here to help you. Contact a member of the reading team with any queries about the reading lesson, Bedrock, recommendations on texts or anything else on your mind.
The research has shown us as a learning community that the link between motivation and reading ability is integral for children. This is an excellent opportunity to congratulate, reward and encourage your children on their reading and vocabulary work.