Tutor Time and Reading Time
At Phoenix, we recognise that reading is an essential life skill and have designed a tutor reading programme to provide our students with the opportunity to engage with reading a wide range of challenging texts. Four mornings a week, tutors will read aloud to their tutor group whilst students follow along in their own copy of the text. Through modelling reading aloud in this way, tutors remove the burden that apprehensive readers may feel if asked to read aloud whilst demonstrating excellent fluency and intonation. Tutors read for 20 minutes each morning, during which time they will ask students to recap on what has been read previously, encourage them to make predictions and ask questions to support students’ comprehension. Studies suggest that students who read for 20 minutes a day will be exposed to 1.8 million words per year!
The Phoenix Cannon
Students will be exposed to wide repertoire of carefully selected texts to challenge and engage them.
Year 7
In Year 7, pupils will read a selection of texts from: The Nowhere Emporium, A Kind of Spark, The Goldfish Boy, Malamander, Know my Place.
Year 8
In Year 8, pupils will read a selection of texts from: Inkheart, Welcome to Nowhere, Pig Heart Boy and The Tulip Touch.
Year 9
In Year 9, pupils will read a selection of texts from: A very Large Expanse of Sea, Lord of the Flies, The Disconnect, Windrush Child, The Boy who Steals Houses, Things the Eye Can’t See, Orange Boy
Year 10
In Year 10 pupils will read a selection of texts from: The Heat of the Moment, Kick the Moon, A Change is Gonna Come, The Night Circus, Scythe, Children of Blood and Bone and Pride and Prejudice.
Year 11
In Year 11 pupils will read: Diverse shorts and Iridescent Adolescent - collections of short stories from English Media Centre
Drop Everything and Read (D.E.A.R)
It is important that our students know how highly everybody in the school values reading, so in Friday’s tutor period the whole school participates in D.E.A.R. Members of the senior leadership team and House teams join a tutor group each week as a ‘guest reader’.