Astrea Academies Trust, based across South Yorkshire and Cambridgeshire, encompasses 18 schools. Astrea's Director of Secondary Education, Richard Tutt, is emphatic about the trust's disciplinary literacy strategy: from the universal adoption of Teach Like a Champion 'FASE' (fluent, accessible, social, expressive) strategies, creation of a bookletised core curriculum, explicit instruction of Tiers 2 and 3 vocabulary, to implementation of Sparx Reader in 8 schools, Astrea's mission is to expose students to ten thousand words per day and to immerse their pupils in at least 25 uninterrupted minutes of challenging reading daily.
By the end of KS3, all of Astrea's students will have read at least 18 additional literature texts and have had 180 hours of further reading time above the English curriculum. The trust's exacting approach to reading provision - and prioritisation of consistency across all of their academies - has been a core tenet of the central education team's strategy. Their ambition is that every child will leave school reading at or above their chronological reading age, and underpinning that is the notion that 'literature belongs to us all'. It is no surprise that, in under two years, many of the schools within Astrea Academies Trust have radically transformed the quality of the education they offer.
Louise Jackson, Astrea's National Lead for English and Literacy, has driven much of the change in this forward-thinking MAT. In this case study, Louise explains how Sparx Reader is integral to the much-lauded 'Astrea Reads' framework.
The parity, adaptability and consistency afforded by Sparx Reader, combined with forensic visibility of reading behaviours for teachers, made it an obvious choice for Astrea. Lacking in rigour and accountability, other reading programmes and typical 'free reading' library lesson set-ups fell short of the high expectations Astrea Academy Trust has for itself. Louise was motivated to find something that gave her visibility of student reading, knowing that “it's really difficult to assess independent silent reading”.
“it's really difficult to assess independent silent reading”
She wanted to find something that would discourage 'path of least resistance' behaviours and to re-train their pupils in the act of attentive reading: “It's just the fact that we're so easily distracted these days. I think Sparx is teaching students to avoid those distractions with reading - we always come back to that idea of careful reading when we talk about Sparx Reader.”
"we always come back to that idea of careful reading when we talk about Sparx Reader.”
“The opportunity to join Sparx fell in line with the same time that we were launching our 'Astrea Reads' framework, and it fit within our Strand Three: encouraging more reading across the schools.”
"encouraging more reading across the schools.”
The framework is focused and straightforward: a limited suite of projects, done really well and with complete consistency, across a large network of schools:
Strand 1: Astrea Reads Aloud
Strand 2: Reading Intervention
Strand 3: Reading in the Curriculum
The team at Sparx Reader met with Astrea's teachers and leaders at the start of the school year to launch the programme - and explain its nuances - to all of the school-based stakeholders. At first staff had questions over how Sparx Reader would support the most able pupils as well as those with lower reading ages, and some parents and teachers reported that it was taking students a long time to complete their homework at first.
This changed when Louise began to emphasise that Sparx Reader has high expectations of how carefully and attentively pupils are reading. Teachers across the trust saw a shift in attitude towards Sparx Reader when they explained to their classes that Sparx Reader is - first and foremost - establishing strong reading processes and habits.
Sparx Reader has high expectations of how carefully and attentively pupils are reading.
Leaders and teachers across Astrea provide as many opportunities as possible for pupils to complete their Sparx Reader homework on time, and - again - there is consistency across the trust in terms of implementation and maintenance of high completion rates. The primary aim is to support all students to make the deadline through constant communication and structured support sessions: two days before homework is due, all Astrea pupils are reminded of the deadline. Any students who have yet to do their Sparx Reader homework the day before the due date are invited to a non-obligatory reading catch up after school, to ensure that they meet the deadline for the next day. Attendance at these pre-deadline sessions is strong. As such, Louise is confident that these systems will ensure at least 90% completion in every class across the entire trust.
The form time group reading (Strand 1) dovetails with the pupils' experience of Sparx Reader. They are being encouraged to read actively, attentively and accountably as a community in form time, and independently through Sparx Reader.
“when asked 'what was the last book you read?'' our pupils can now answer that question because they are actually reading,
Prioritising transparency, she shares trust-wide data regularly with SLT reading links, line managers for English, Heads of Department and - not least - Principals.
“it's almost as though they want to read more to prove that they can do it.”
“so now they're reading out of choice, for pleasure. These are students that couldn't read at the beginning of the year.”