Our Whole-School Reading Strategy
At Burnley High School, we are passionate about creating confident, capable, and curious readers. We believe that reading is not just a school skill—it’s a life skill. Our whole-school reading strategy is designed to ensure every student, no matter their starting point, can access learning, develop a love of reading, and thrive both in and beyond the classroom.
Wave 1: High-Quality Reading for All
At the heart of our strategy is Wave 1, which guarantees that every student is taught to read well and read often. We embed five evidence-based reading strategies into lessons across all subjects, ensuring that reading development is a shared responsibility across the whole school:
- Reciprocal Reading teaches students how to predict, question, clarify, and summarise as they read—building strong comprehension and active thinking.
- Explicit Vocabulary Instruction helps unlock tricky words by exploring meaning, usage, and connections before students encounter them in texts.
- Guided Reading provides space for students to read together with the teacher, who models strategies and asks questions to deepen understanding.
- Annotation encourages students to interact with texts directly—underlining key ideas, jotting thoughts in margins, and making notes that help them remember and reflect.
- Choral Reading supports fluency and confidence by allowing students to read aloud together or echo-read with the teacher, improving decoding and expression.
Every week, students also take part in a dedicated one-hour Reading for Pleasure session during form time. This is a quiet, focused moment where students can enjoy age-appropriate, inspiring books from our curated collection—reading for enjoyment, imagination, and escape. Staff model reading alongside them, showing that we are a school of readers at every level.
Wave 2: Targeted Support for Students Who Need It
For students who need extra help, Wave 2 provides structured, targeted interventions based on individual reading assessments. These include small-group sessions focused on areas like phonics, fluency, comprehension, and even handwriting, where needed. These groups are led by trained staff and are matched to each learner’s specific needs. Progress is carefully tracked and reviewed, ensuring support is effective and responsive.
This layer of support is proactive and positive—giving students the chance to catch up and build confidence while remaining fully included in their wider curriculum.
Wave 3: Personalised, Specialist Provision
In a small number of cases, students require more specialist help with reading. Wave 3 brings in the support of external agencies, such as educational psychologists or speech and language professionals, as well as tailored access to assistive technology or bespoke reading materials. This highly personalised approach helps students overcome more complex barriers to reading, ensuring they are never left behind. At this stage we also ensure students who need additional access arrangements (such as readers or enlarged texts) are fully supported, so they can show what they know without being limited by the reading demands of the task.
