Literacy & Oracy

The books chosen for the programme have been carefully selected to allow students access to a rich variety of literature including classic fiction, modern fiction, and non-fiction.  They are age appropriate, challenging, and enjoyable. They cover a vast range of topics that will engage and inspire our students and further promote a love of reading. 

The books have also been chosen with the school’s values and Aspire programme in mind. For example: 

• ‘I am Malala’ by Malala Yousafzai links with Respect, Determination, Ambition, Tolerance, and Integrity as her autobiography exemplifies her resilience and courage to stand up for women’s rights to education and how she overcame her injuries to achieve outstanding exam results and to become the youngest Nobel Prize laureate.  
• ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’ by John Boyne links with Respect and Tolerance as it is a story based on the horrors of The Holocaust and how we should never allow such persecution to happen in this way again.  
• ‘Chinese Cinderella’ by Adeline Yen Mah links with Tolerance as we learn about the harsh treatment of Chinese culture towards girls.  
• ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ by Harper Lee links with Respect, Tolerance and Integrity as the narrator’s story teaches us about racial prejudice in America and the narrator’s father, Atticus Finch, serves as a moral hero and a model of integrity for lawyers.  
• ‘Noughts and Crosses’ by Malorie Blackman links with Respect and Tolerance as its dystopian setting explores an alternative future in which black people hold power over white people to examine racial prejudice.  
• ‘Touching the Void’ by Joe Simpson links with Determination and Ambition as we learn about the true story of Simpson’s and Yates’ attempt to reach the summit of the previously unclimbed West Face of Siula Grande. However, it goes badly wrong, and they both face a life and death decision.  
• ‘The Hate U Give’ by Angie Thomas links with Tolerance and Integrity as it follows the events of a black 16-year-old girl who becomes an activist after she witnesses the police shooting of a childhood friend.  

All teachers pride themselves on being teachers of literacy. Literacy lies at the heart of everything that they do. The explicit teaching of vocabulary and disciplinary literacy is prioritized in every lesson. Lessons promote reading, vocabulary, and oracy so that students are developing their reading ability, their ability to understand the world around them and so that they are developing their own voice. Schemes of learning include the explicit teaching of vocabulary; this helps students build upon their knowledge of words and the etymology of words.  

At ICA we want to ensure that all of our students can access the curriculum and there is a robust literacy intervention programme available for students who fall below the expected reading age or standard age score.  

At the start and end of each academic year, students complete the New Group Reading Test (NGRT), which provides students’ reading ages and standard age scores. The data captured from these reading tests enables us to decide on the specificity of intervention for each individual student and measure any progress made.  

Lexonix Interventions 

• For students with an SAS of 85 or below, we provide Lexonik Leap intervention so that students with gaps in their phonic knowledge can progress. This programme effectively resolves phonics gaps for students who find literacy particularly challenging and for those for whom English is not their first language, it helps students make rapid reading progress, spelling progress and supports progress with oracy. 
• For students with an SAS of 86 to 100 we provide Lexonik Advance intervention. This programme encourages learners to develop their phonological awareness; it helps support students to make links between unknown words using common prefixes, stems and suffix definitions. It is a programme that leverages metacognition, repetition, decoding and automaticity and helps students to rapidly improve their reading, spelling, vocabulary and comprehension skills. 

Sparx Reader Programme 

Students across the academy are encouraged to read for homework; at ICA we use the Sparx Reader programme where students can choose their own books to read, making this programme personalized. Students are tested on their accuracy when reading; they are prompted to work on their comprehension and recall skills and must answer questions on the book that they are reading. This programme provides real-time insights for teachers on who is reading and making progress.