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"Castle School Education Trust is committed to high quality education across the primary, secondary and sixth form key stages. Our schools cover the South Gloucestershire area. We encourage independence within each school within a strong framework of values."

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Mangotsfield Secondary

  • Key Dates for Term 4: 02/04 Y7-Y10 Challenge Day, Term 4 Ends Thursday 2nd April and Starts Monday 20th April

Literacy

The importance of promoting Literacy at Mangotsfield School:

Literacy is at the heart of everything we do at Mangotsfield School, and we have built a strong reading culture.. We want to reduce the impact of the pandemic for our students in relation to gaps in vocabulary and/or a lack of reading practice. Our school vision is to significantly improve the literacy of all our students in order to give them the best life chances and choices. Quality first teaching is central to our approach and therefore much of the support for literacy happens in the classroom. 

Literacy support for students:

At Mangotsfield School literacy is supported in lessons through some key resources. 

Unit topsheets: In every subject students are provided with unit top sheets which explain key terms, concepts and contain the topic’s keywords. 

Try Now sheets: Students receive feedback in lessons on a Try Now sheet; the everyone try task is a literacy based task which supports reading, writing or vocabulary development.  

Keywords: These are displayed around the classroom and are referred to routinely in lessons. Keywords are centered around tier 2 vocabulary which helps students understand the lesson content. 

Knowledge organisers: A student will have a knowledge organiser for every topic. These contain keywords, phrases, written models and examples to support students' learning and literacy. 

Mentor Reading Programme:

The mentor reading programme plays a key role in supporting students to develop their literacy skills and reading for pleasure. Students in Years 7 – 10 read with their mentor 3 times a week, focusing on 6 key reading strategies that support reading comprehension.

Reading Lesson

All Key Stage 3 students (Years 7-9) visit the Learning Resource Centre once a fortnight as part of the English Curriculum. Students are expected to read silently for the first half of the lesson and then to engage in an activity related to reading for the second part. Students are encouraged to choose their books for this session during social times or before and after school, where they can receive help from Mrs Gilardoni, the Literacy and Library
Coordinator. The LRC is open before school, from 8am and after school, until 4pm (3:30pm on Friday).

Homework

Homework at KS3 and KS4 supports literacy and the development of key vocabulary with quizzing of keywords and the retrieval of key facts which support reading and writing.

Intervention for Struggling Readers:

In addition to our in class support, students are also supported in their literacy development through a range of interventions. 

Power up Lexia: A structured computer based literacy programme which aims to accelerate literacy progress in the areas of word study, grammar and comprehension. 

Guided Reading: Small group/individual sessions based on developing comprehension and inference skills outlined in our reading strategies.

1-2-1 targeted sessions: individual support to target a specific literacy need led by a member of the SEND Department.