Literacy – speaking and listening, reading and writing - is the foundation of your child’s education.

At Cardinal Pole School, we take Literacy extremely seriously. In addition to English lessons, we support your child’s reading, writing and speaking skills in the following ways:

• Our well stocked Library is staffed by a Librarian who is trained as an English teacher.
• Our School Poet, Christian Foley, visits school to inspire a passion for poetry.
• Students identified as needing extra help are given support in small groups – Excellent Reader sessions in Prep time, for example. 
• In Years 7-9 all pupils take part in Guided Reading of a novel with their form tutors during Prep once a week.

How to support your child’s Literacy:

• Encourage your child to develop a daily reading habit. Young people who read for twenty minutes a day read 1.8 million words over the course of a school year. This knowledge will help them to achieve more highly in all of their school subjects.
• Ask your child about the book they are reading.
• Encourage your child to visit the Library at least once a week, and take part in extra-curricular activities, such as the Book Club. 

The Excellent Reader Programme  

At the start of every academic year we test the reading ages of all pupils and put in place high-quality help for those we identify as needing support.  

Excellent Reader is a reading intervention programme developed by Cardinal Pole, and involves a small group of pupils in Years 7-10 meeting with our Librarian once a week during Prep to work through a booklet of age-appropriate novel extracts. Homework is set and reviewed each week; parents are asked to check and sign each completed piece. Reading age progress noted in pupils who have completed the course has proven to be substantial.  

This short video explains the process: https://bit.ly/3x0TUV6  

If you would like any further information please contact Ms Walton, the Librarian, at school.    

Literacy Reading Lists

 

 

 

 

 

More About Literacy

We have a group of Year 7 pupils who are Hackney Reading Ambassadors and work hard to develop a love of reading across the school.  Their activities include helping on the Library desk, writing book reviews, putting together the Library newsletter and organising book sales.