Student Resources
“Reading, writing, speaking and listening are at the heart of knowing and doing Science, Art, History, and every other subject in secondary school.” Education Endowment Fund
Below are some practical strategies you can use to access reading material and be motivated to read more:
Practical Strategies for Comprehension (understanding what you are reading)
1) Connect what you read to what you already know. Ways to activate prior knowledge include: looking at headings, key topics and concepts before reading, or making a prediction and confirmation chart.
2) Rehearse summarisation skills, for example choosing one word to replace multiple related words from the text, so that you can identify the most important parts of what they read. This will help to focus their reading.
3) Ask and answer questions before, during and after reading. These can be questions that come from teachers too and the answers could be explicitly found in the text or may need to be inferred.
Practical Strategies for Motivation
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Read a variety of genres and choose material linked to your interests. Read something you enjoy. This will help your vocabulary and give you a greater background of knowledge.
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Increase opportunities for collaborative reading where you can read together, and share and discuss the information. This may take the form of a Book club too where you can even hold meetings virtually.
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Heston Community School Top 10 Reads
Useful Links
Key Stage 3 and 4 Reading Lists:
https://schoolreadinglist.co.uk/category/secondary-ks3-ks4-reading-lists/
https://schoolreadinglist.co.uk
Book Lists for Video Gaming Fans:
https://cdn.literacytrust.org.uk/media/documents/Awesome_books_for_video_games_fans.pdf
