Reading Changes Lives!
Here at Don Valley Academy, we…
- Have a Trust-wide Reading Policy to support your child’s ability to access and understand a range of challenging texts in their lessons.
- Consistently use challenging texts across the curriculum and subjects to enhance the reading ability of our students.
- Have a huge range of books and texts in our top-quality Reading Hub which your child can borrow and read at their leisure.
- Routinely reward and celebrate reading through assemblies, awards, and more to show off the value and importance of reading to our students.
- Routinely test and inform your child of their reading age (which is a way of grading their reading ability in comparison to their actual age).
- Are proud that the reading ability of our students is consistently above the national average.
- Constantly use brand-new scientific research to inform how we teach and celebrate reading.
Reading Routes
Reading Tokens
Reading Tokens which students can be awarded in lessons – each token is worth one free book!
Did you know….?
According to research, if a child reads for a minimum of 20 minutes per day, they are more likely to…
- Leave secondary school with a set of excellent GCSEs.
- Be happier and healthier, and live a longer life.
- Be more intelligent and imaginative.
- Earn more money over their life – up to £100k more than average!
- Have a career they enjoy and thrive in.
- Be able to overcome stress and anxiety easier than the average person.
At Don Valley Academy, we understand just how important reading is to the success and life chances of our students and your child. Therefore, we:
- Test all new Y7s twice on their reading ability, and again in Y8 and Y9.
- Offer reading regular intervention and support to those students who need to improve their reading age.
- Have various other systems of support for students who may struggle with reading due to various needs or reasons.
- Have a popular system of rewarding students for reading that they complete, called Reading Routes (see image below).
- Have an amazing Reading Hub with a team of dedicated staff here to help and support students to develop a love and habit of reading.
- Reward students for excellence in lessons with Reading Tokens, which they can redeem for free books from our amazing vending machines.