Overview
The school has chosen to continue the Catch Up literacy programme in order to improve the literacy skills of students in Yr7, 8 and 9 (2014-2015) who have started KS3 below level 4 in reading or who have a below average chronological reading age. These students will follow the new GCSE curriculum from 2015 onwards. These GCSEs will be linear with an emphasis on the quality of written communication and higher order literacy skills. Poor literacy skills mean that these students will have difficulty accessing the curriculum and are therefore unlikely to make the expected progress. Literacy is a life skill and the school aims to develop strategies aimed at raising our students’ literacy standards and developing literacy across the curriculum, thereby enhancing students’ performance and levels of attainment and enabling them to become independent learners.
Purpose
The purpose of the Catch Up literacy intervention programme is to significantly improve the reading ages of these students so that they have access to all areas of the curriculum. A further impact of this intervention is that their progress in English improves over a period of 6-12 months. What we did
Once students had been identified as requiring Catch Up intervention (CATs, SATs, Group Reading Test), they were re-tested using the Salford Reading Test (as recommended by the Catch Up Programme). There were some variations between the results of the group reading tests and the Salford test. Students tended to perform slightly better on the Salford Test but were well below their chronological reading age. Students have to meet these three criteria in order to complete the programme successfully: meet all their Catch Up targets; be able to understand and spell 240 key words and be within at least 6 months of their chronological reading age. Currently, there are 32 students on the Catch Up Literacy programme. 15 students in Year 7, 10 students in Year 8 and 7 students in Year 9. Progress is measured against the reading sub levels from the college’s Aimhigh data system.
Outcome/Impact
The Catch Up programme has been running from September 2014 and is ongoing. The following results reflect the impact of Catch Up on students in January 2015: In Year 7, 2 out of 15 students have made at least one sub level of progress (13%). In Year 8, 6 out of 10 students have made at least one sub level of progress (60%). One student has made a full level of progress in reading (4C-5C). In Year 9, 3 out of 7 students have made at least one sub level of progress (43%). Overall, 11 students out of the 32 have made at least one sub level of progress (34.3%).