Reading and Writing
We have a focus on reading in Simmons House Classroom as part of our Literacy Improvement Plan, our aim is to further embed reading throughout the school by encouraging a love of reading.
We aim to take the basic functionality of reading, writing and speaking and listening further. We want to engender a love of reading and develop writing skills so that they can be practically applied to formal assessment; improving exam outcomes as well as improving all students’ ability to communicate their ideas effectively to the world. We seek to ensure that all students work towards improving their reading ages by the end of admission.
A few of the ways we do this are;
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Book club - staff and young people pick a book and the team and young people are encouraged to read it before attending a community book club.
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Book Drive - each young person can pick whatever book they would like to read as one of their welcome exercises and it is be purchased for them as part of our reading drive, we began this initiative last November 2022 and have so far bought over 25 books for our young people.
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Book Review Blog Posts - we encourage young people to review their chosen book using a book review and young people are offered the opportunity to publish their writing on our classroom blog.
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Paired reading - we read aloud to young people who prefer to listen than read as a way to encourage engagement
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Patron of Reading Workshops - a professional writer and illustrator visits us once a year to run a workshop around creating and writing stories.
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Mobile Library - we are able to request books through Haringey Library Service - who run a mobile library service, delivering us books of our choice every 4 weeks.
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Work Experience with the local book shop - we have links with House of Books who have offered volunteering opportunities to our young people, a fantastic way of linking with our local community and fostering our love of books!
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Poetry Competitions - we LOVE poetry in Simmons House Classroom and there is amble opportunities to produce work, we have created three anthologies this year and are working on more!
