Our Monday Magic Moment in Staff Briefing at the start of this week was led by our inspirational Lead Practitioner of English and Whole School Literacy for the Bushey St James Trust Ms Bowe. She reminded all staff about the importance of promoting our reading agenda and outlined all the varied embedded initiatives that support all students to progress in their levels of literacy which underpins all learning across our varied and rich curriculum at Bushey Meads.

These initiatives include our Word of the Week promoted in Character Development Time, our silent CDC reading on Friday mornings – where students carefully follow specially chosen age-related texts read by their CDC or listened to via audio. This activity exposes students to appropriately challenging vocabulary which is discussed and explained during the morning CDC time and supports them to develop a richer vocabulary themselves in their own writing.

Other initiatives include targeted interventions that take place in the Learning Resource Centre – a rich ‘hub of our school’, or in classrooms within the English or Learning Support Faculty, our regular use of Bedrock Vocabulary – a powerful online platform used in weekly English lessons and of course our hugely popular themed literacy days throughout the year.

Our DEAR (Drop Everything and Read) Events each half term – when the school bell rings during lesson time and we literally drop everything and read, continue to remind us all that literacy is absolutely key to success!

As parents and carers do continue to encourage your students to read on a daily basis – it doesn’t necessarily matter what they read or in what format – that fact they are reading is enough to develop those excellent habits that support them in achieving their potential in life in all subjects.