Student Support
Key Groups
Without good literacy skills a person can be held back at every stage of their life. They may struggle with their work at school, as a young adult they may struggle to secure employment, and as a parent they may find it difficult to support their own child’s learning. At Trinity Academy Bradford, we ensure that students with a reading age below expectation, or with baseline test results indicating a need for extra help with spelling and grammar, are provided with additional support. We also offer numeracy and literacy support for all of our new Year 7 students so that they can feel confident and ready to go with their first English and Maths lessons at secondary school. The information below will give you an overview of what’s on offer.
The Landmark Dash Booklet
To help our new Year 7 students get prepared for their September start, we put together a literacy and numeracy booklet for each of them and ask that it is completed during the summer break. This is called ‘The Landmark Dash’. The booklet is put together with your child’s primary school teacher(s) and provides students with activities to help revise the trickiest aspects of Year 6 literacy and numeracy. There is a reward for every completed booklet and parents and siblings can help, too!
Nurture Support
Nurture is all about improving those important literacy skills through a range of different topics, with a focus on improving reading, writing, speaking and listening skills. It is also about learning the skills you will need to be more confident and effective in all of your lessons. You will need to be ready and well-prepared for the reading, writing, speaking and listening skills you will need in later years. We all have different strengths and weaknesses. It is important to identify those literacy and learning skills you are less confident with and then help you to fill the gaps and clear up any misunderstandings. You will follow an adapted phonics programme, complete activities based upon reading for meaning and vocabulary development, and you will have dedicated reading time. This is something which is part of the English GCSE programme of study. We believe in giving our students the best possible opportunities to fulfil their aspirations. Further information regarding the phonics resource is available at: http://www.ruthmiskin.com/en/
What is Bungee?
When gaps in students’ writing skills (punctuation and grammar) appear during Phase One, this is addressed through Bungee intervention. The Bungee intervention team are highly skilled in providing small group support to address misconceptions and misunderstanding. Students are selected for this on a dynamic basis throughout the year.
What is Platinum?
Platinum is our very successful reading based intervention programme which ensures that all students in Years 7 and 8 have the opportunity to read to the best of their ability and further develop a love of reading. Platinum lessons focus on reading fluency, vocabulary development, comprehension and discussion skills. Students work in small groups accessing fiction and short selected non-fiction passages to support their humanities curriculum.
What is Enrich?
Enrich is a continuation of Nurture and focuses on essential literacy skill development. As students move into Years 10 and 11, they will put into practice all of the reading, writing, speaking and listening skills they will have learnt in Nurture, refining and improving them. In the strand of the programme entitled ‘Enrich into Adulthood’, students will look at developing key lifelong skills and will create a booklet of what they have achieved so that they can refer to it at any stage later in life.