Year 7 Reading and Oracy Programme Commencing Summer Term 2021

Dear Parents/Carers,

Re: Year 7 Reading and Oracy Programme Commencing Summer Term 2021

We hope that you are all keeping well and have had a restful break over the Easter Holidays.

We are writing to inform you of an exciting initiative we are launching at Ormiston Park Academy relating to reading and oracy. We recognise the importance of exposing our students to a variety of topical/cultural experiences to prepare them for our wonderful, but everchanging world. In consideration of this, we are delighted to inform you that our Year 7 students will be taking part in Ormiston Park Academy’s new Reading and Oracy Programme. Our mission is to develop our students’ ability to read for pleasure and purpose; to enhance their language acquisition and comprehension, and to develop their reading aloud skills through good modelling.

With the launch of our fabulous library and in conjunction with our well-established Accelerated Reader Programme, we feel that it is time to capitalise on all the great learning that is happening in the Academy.

There is a wealth of educational research which highlights the huge benefits of reading aloud to children. In recognition of this, for three Tutor Time sessions per week, Tutors will be reading a novel to their Tutees. Students will then be encouraged to take part in discussions by verbally answering a variety of questions to develop their comprehension and oracy skills. Our emphasis is reading for pleasure, but we believe that the new initiative will have many educational and wellbeing benefits across the curriculum. The chosen novel is Pig Heart Boy by Malorie Blackman; a powerful and thought-provoking text which is sure to spark some fantastic conversations.

In order to outline the Reading and Oracy Programme in more detail, we would like to invite you to a Live Microsoft Teams Year 7 Parent Launch Event at 5:00-5.30pm, on Thursday 15th April. Log in will be via your child’s MS Teams account and we will send further information early next week. We do hope you will join us. There will be time at the end of the presentation for question + answer.

In the meantime, should you have any questions, please contact our Deputy Curriculum Leaders of English, Miss Mabbort and Miss Maynard: [email protected]
[email protected]
As always, we thank you for your continued support.

Yours sincerely

Mark Roessler
Principal