Literacy, Numeracy & Reading
Literacy
Secure literacy knowledge is essential in enabling our students to achieve success. Live literacy lessons are delivered twice a half term to Years 7 and 11. Live literacy aims to improve engagement with literacy in key year groups, to build upon and embed Year 6 knowledge and skills into Year 7, to secure key literacy skills to support with students’ work across the curriculum and provide Year 11s with the advanced and targeted literacy skills necessary for GCSE success. Our live literacy sessions are delivered by expert teachers.
Numeracy
Our Numeracy skills are essential in day-to-day life, helping us to manage tasks such as buying groceries, reading train timetables, paying bills and other similar events. Live numeracy is about developing these skills: a student's problem-solving ability, and their general confidence with numbers.
Live Numeracy sessions are presented by expert teachers every half term to Year 7 and Year 11 students. Live Numeracy looks to increase engagement across in maths, build upon common misconceptions and examiner reports from Year 6 SATs, and build fluency in real life topics that GCSE students often find difficult.
We also offer tutor time interventions to students in those key year groups. For Year 7 students, we look to close any gaps from primary school and give each student a strong start to their numeracy work at St Joseph's. To do this, we create small groups where a 6th Form student mentors 3 or 4 Year 7 students, helping with their numeracy skills. For Year 11 students it is about looking at problems in a real-life context to aid with their upcoming GCSE exams. Small groups of students are given intervention from an expert teacher, building confidence and expanding their understanding of topics.
At St. Joseph’s Catholic Academy, numeracy plays a central role in each student’s academic journey. We believe that strong numeracy skills are fundamental to success across all subjects and in everyday life. Our staff are committed to supporting students' development through ongoing professional development (CPD), ensuring that teaching practices are continuously improved to meet the needs of all learners. Additionally, students receive targeted numeracy support during tutor time, where they can further develop their skills in a focused and supportive environment.
Beyond the classroom, we offer a variety of enrichment opportunities to further engage students in numeracy. The Maths Challenge and inter-trust competitions allow students to challenge themselves and apply their mathematical thinking in a competitive yet supportive setting. Our Puzzle Club provides a fun and stimulating environment for students to explore different problem-solving strategies, while other enrichment activities encourage creative and critical thinking.
Numeracy also plays a key role in our PSHE curriculum, where students develop practical skills in financial literacy, preparing them for real-world financial decision-making. An exciting example of this is Duck Day, a dynamic numeracy-based business learning activity where students create and manage their own business plans, learning valuable lessons in budgeting, pricing, and profit-making.
By integrating numeracy across the curriculum and providing extra opportunities for practice and enrichment, we aim to empower students with the confidence and competence they need to excel both in school and beyond.
Numeracy Coherence:
Maths specialists work in collaboration with other departments to ensure that the approaches used when teaching mathematical skills are consistently applied across the academy.
Numeracy Interventions:
Structured interventions are used to provide additional support for pupils that are identified from assessments as having gaps in knowledge. Depending upon the support required pupils may receive additional support within lessons working as part of a small group with an additional maths specialist. Alternatively, pupils may attend a morning intervention session with a bespoke program of study that will allow larger gaps in knowledge and misconceptions to be addressed.
Reading
Reading is central to all areas of school life at St. Joseph’s. We believe that helping our students to enjoy reading and appreciate the benefits of being a proficient reader is a priority. The ability to read fluently and precisely is not only the gateway to our curriculum and key to academic success – it is essential for the well-being and future prospects of all our students, regardless of their starting points.
Monitoring Reading Proficiency
All students entering Y7 sit the New Group Reading Test (NGRT) – an adaptive, digital test which measures students’ strengths with reading and identifies what they might need help with.
The test provides a Standardised Age Score (SAS). A score of 100 is average. Students scoring SAS 85 and under are likely to require further support with phonics and fluency. Students scoring SAS 86-96 might need some support with fluency, a vocabulary top-up or some guided reading to enhance their comprehension of texts.
Students in other year groups might also sit the NGRT if we feel that this is necessary. However, in most cases, we will read 1:1 with students in older years to measure their ability and place them on one of the intervention pathways below if further support is needed.
In addition, the school uses a Sparx Reading programme which provides information on students’ reading age, their standardised score, their ability to understand, interpret and engage with texts, and the breadth of their vocabulary.
The reason the school regularly assesses students’ reading proficiency is twofold: firstly, to ensure that no students who may require additional support with their reading remain unidentified and they can access an intervention programme tailored to their needs; and secondly to ensure that students are reading books at a level that will help them to make rapid progress with their reading comprehension.
Reading Interventions
The school has several layers of intervention in place for students who require additional support with their reading. Students are initially identified by their standardised score following either an NGRT assessment, through Sparx reading or by reading with a specially trained member of staff on a 1:1 basis. We then have several reading pathways that students are placed on if this is deemed necessary:
- Phonics: students engage with a programme called Sounds Write to master the phonetic code.
- Fluency and Comprehension Pathway: small-group intervention. Reading directed on fluency and comprehension with a focus on prosody and decoding. Reciprocal, choral and echo reading employed.
- Lexia Pathway: an online tailored program which targets three interrelated strands: word study, grammar and comprehension. All promote accuracy and automaticity.
- Sparx Reading Support: targets reading routines and strategies to promote pace and automaticity. This adapts to individual needs and matches age-appropriate material.
Reading Strategy ‘On a Page’
Our reading strategy on a page document captures the different intervention pathways open to students if these are deemed appropriate. This captures the information above and places students into clear pathways.