During tutor time, we have launched our exciting form time Reading Ahead programme! Reading a range of texts is important not only for students' success in school but it has been proven to help their own personal development too. Students who read are often better at communicating as well as having a wider vocabulary.
Each term, students from Years 7-11 will spend part of form time reading a carefully selected novel with their form tutor. Tutors will read to students as well as question and encourage discussion around the key ideas and concepts that arise in the texts. Students will also receive a vocabulary book to note down any new or unfamiliar words that they encounter. This means by the time students leave school in Year 11 they will have read 15 extra novels.
If you would like to read along with students at home and discuss what they're reading, this term's texts are as follows:
Born with facial differences that have prevented him from going to a mainstream school, Auggie Pullman is nervous when his parents tell him he must attend middle school once he starts fifth grade. As his family and his new classmates struggle to discover their compassion and acceptance, Auggie's extraordinary journey will unite them and prove you can't blend in when you were born to stand out.
Set in Northern Ireland and England against the backdrop of the Northern Ireland conflict the novel deal with a young couple; Sadie Jackson, who is from the Ulster Protestant community, and Kevin McCoy, who is from the Irish Catholic community. This couple finds love despite the various physical and psychological barriers in their society.
Published in 1937, it narrates the experiences of George Milton and Lennie Small, two displaced migrant ranch workers, who move from place to place in California in search of new job opportunities during the Great Depression in the United States.
Starr Carter is constantly switching between two worlds -the poor, mostly black neighbourhood where she lives and the wealthy, mostly white prep school that she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is soon shattered when she witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend at the hands of a police officer.
The story of a group of young boys who find themselves alone on a deserted island. They develop rules and a system of organization, but without any adults to serve as a civilizing impulse, the children eventually become violent and brutal.
If you have any further queries surrounding the programme, please contact Miss Howard at [email protected].