Boosting Literacy and Reading at the Raedwald Trust
Literacy and reading training has been brought to the forefront of professional development for staff across the Raedwald Trust.
This exciting opportunity, supported by the Ipswich Opportunity Area project, will ensure that all Raedwald Trust sites have a sharp focus on reading across the curriculum. This focus will include specialist training for staff about dyslexia, and direct development in terms of effectively assessing and delivering phonics and specialised reading strategies from Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) to Key Stage 4. This will be supported by quality Continuous Professional Development (CPD) and an ongoing dialogue about how the life chances of all children and young people across the Trust can be improved.
The training will ensure that a consistent and evidence informed approach to the teaching of reading will be embedded across the Trust, which is clearly and progressively evident within each setting’s curriculum. This will be achieved through the following training modules:
– “Readers make great leaders”
– “The Theory of Reading”
– “Developing a whole school reading culture”
– “Pure Phonics Subject Knowledge”
– “Best practice in phonics teaching”
– “Phonemic awareness in EYFS”
– “Securing Reading Fluency”
– “What happens when phonics goes wrong?”
– “Reading for Life”
– “Building a literature spine”
– “Securing accurate retrieval”
– “Progression in inference”
– “Reading toolkit”
– “Authorial intent and the whole text”
The specialist training modules will be delivered by Lauren Meadows from Greenfields Education throughout this academic year, and all staff are invited to attend. The training will also involve Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) teams, who will work within their sites to support staff development and understanding; this includes Level 3 training in Dyslexia across sites. In-school reading reviews will take place in March 2020 to ensure that the training and progress is on track.
Nationally, 21.7% of pupils have some form of Speech, Language and Communication Need (SLCN) and 12.5% have a Specific Learning Difficulty (SpLD). In Alternative Provision, these figures are often higher, having an impact on students’ capacity to access the curriculum. By upskilling staff, specific difficulties will be identified earlier and will ensure targeted support is put in place across the curriculum.
Mrs Ashlee Jacobs, Pedagogical Lead at the Raedwald Trust said: “Reading is a life skill which opens the world to pupils; it is essential that we give our them the skills and abilities to access the wider world and increase their capacity for success in the future.
“All schools at the Raedwald Trust will examine their oracy, language around emotional literacy and more widely increasing the vocabulary of our pupils and all staff will receive training about early language development, reading and comprehension.
“We want to ensure that all staff across the Trust are equipped to support pupils in developing reading fluency and comprehension, whatever their starting point.
“This training is a great opportunity for all our staff and pupils and we are excited to see what the outcome will be.”
