At The Latimer Arts College, we recognise the importance of our responsibility to ensure that our young people leave school with good literacy skills to empower them to read their own world and write their own history (National Literacy Trust, 2008).

The National Literacy Trust defines literacy as: 'the ability to read, write, speak and listen in a way that lets us communicate effectively and make sense of the world' (2017) and our aim is to ensure that our students leave us with the literacy skills to enable them to thrive in society.

Our literacy strategy is based primarily on the recommendations in the Education Endowment Foundation's guidance report 'Improving Literacy in Secondary Schools' (2018); Alex's Quigley's 'Closing the Gap' series and the Ofsted 'Supporting Struggling Readers' research and analysis reports.

Curriculum aims

Our aim is to develop the literacy skills of students through whole- school strategies, which are adapted for subject specific purposes.

We aim to improve students' ability to use and understand a wide range of Tier 2/3 vocabulary accurately and within different contexts.

Our vision to READ

Reduce Barriers to reading by making effective use of assessment and data;

Engage students to develop a love for reading by exposing them to a range of texts and opportunities to build upon cultural capital;

Adapt strategies to read a range of texts;

Deliver high quality interventions personalised to the needs of the student.

Curriculum Design

Literacy is delivered discretely across the curriculum with a whole-college focus on closing the reading gap and the explicit teaching of Tier 2/3 vocabulary. Strategies such as: Frayer Models; teachers reading aloud; echo reading and 'say it again, better' are implemented across departments, tailored to meet disciplinary needs.


Students are exposed to academic texts and when reading for a purpose, the 'high-five reading' strategy is implemented to ensure students have the opportunity to: skim, scan and predict to allow for clarification and questioning before summarising and consolidating knowledge.

Students in Years 7 and 8 have a fortnightly Literacy lesson, in our dedicated college Library run by our qualified Librarian, where they access a range of both fiction and non-fiction texts.

Students in Years 7 and 8 access Accelerated Reader, an online programme which allows staff to monitor students' understanding of the books they are reading.

Students in Years 7- 9 access Bedrock Learning, an online vocabulary intervention programme with a focus on exposing students to Tier 2 vocabulary.

All teaching staff have a collective responsibility to:

  *   Lead by example, ensuring that Standard English and academic language is modelled and expected in the classroom;
  *   Promote and expect attention to punctuation, spelling and grammar;
  *   Provide opportunities to model reading aloud with a focus on prosody and to model enjoyment of reading for pleasure;
  *   Provide opportunities for structured talk.