Maths
Students who arrive in Year 7 significantly below the expected standard are targeted with an intervention programme. These students are withdrawn during curriculum time for small group intervention with a Maths specialist Teaching Assistant. The aim of this intervention is to bringing their numeracy skills in-line with their peers within the first term.
English
- Bespoke reading and literacy interventions led by specialist teaching assistants.
- Phonics programme.
- Accelerated reader project.
- Whole school training to promote literacy, SPAG.
Impact
The Phonics Programme
- The Phonics Programme is delivered by one teacher and two Teaching Assistants.
- The interventions are run as small groups and take place periods 1, 2 & 3 every day. Each small group will attend 1 of those periods, every day, for a period of 6 weeks. They are then tested to assess their reading age. If RA is still below required reading age, they stay on the intervention for another 6 weeks. If the desired reading age has been achieved they finish the intervention.
- Students who are a cause for concern will be checked upon towards the end of year 7 and in some cases year 8 also.
- Based on the NGRT reading ages that all year 7s get at the start of the year, anyone who scores aged 11 or below will be tested by our team using the Schonell Single Word Reading Test. If they have a single word reading age of 11.06 years or below they will join the intervention.
- The intervention is delivered in several ways depending on the students needs. It can solely be phonics based or it can incorporate some comprehension (sometimes there is a big discrepancy between the NGRT reading age and single word reading age so this aims to close the gap) but always involves lots of reading, each day.
Impact
- Of the 22 students identified for the phonics programme, all students increased their reading age beyond their chronological age.
- The average increase in the students’ reading age was 19 months.
Numeracy
- 22 students we identified with scores of 27 or less ( out of 40) from their KS2 Arithmetic Test.
- Each student took part in a series of 20 minute small group intervention sessions led by a Maths specialist Teaching Assistant. The number of sessions was dependent on the specific needs of the indivdual student.
- The students were tested before the intervention and tested again after the intervention.
- The average score in the initial test was 45%. The average student on the final test was 74% – the is an average increase of 29%.