The Lister Weekly Update #20

A huge success story from our year of reading has been the progress of students taking part in a reading intervention. The selected students from KS3 have been developing their reading with fluency. This type of reading is when students read aloud with the aim of trying to 'perform' the reading text. This means that they are emphasising certain words in each sentence and that they are pausing in the correct places - always with punctuation, but also adding minor pauses at the points where a writer would want the sentence read in that way. The group added 2 years, on average, to their reading comprehension. One student progressed by 4 years in reading comprehension. As we've explained in the past, reading is the primary skill that will help your children succeed in their education. So you can imagine that this particular student is going to fly through their assessments from this point onwards.

There are several groups of students who are still going through this intervention currently and we expect the same kind of success from them. In all Lister classrooms we want the students to read in a way that will help them make progress - this means that they will hear teachers telling them to 'Turn on the screen in their heads' (this is the instruction we use to make them imagine the ideas being written about in a text). We also expect students to read with their fingers tracking along a text. This might seem a little basic, but it does stop the attention wandering off into a place where they are not reading the text. Finally, we expect, in all classrooms, the reading to have that sense of performance - so that each classroom should have readers who sound like they are reading from an audio book.

The PSHRE Curriculum this term is focused on online safety. Have you noticed that people are sometimes more willing to be open and honest or rude and offensive when online? This comes from the disinhibition effect which is explained here in text from Wikipedia:

The online disinhibition effect refers to the lack of restraint one feels when communicating online in comparison to communicating in-person.[1] People tend to feel safer saying things online which they would not say in real life because they have the ability to remain completely anonymous and invisible when on particular websites, and as a result, free from potential consequences.[2] Apart from anonymity, other factors such as asynchronous communication, empathy deficit, or individual personality and cultural factors also contribute to online disinhibition.[3][4] The manifestations of such an effect could be in both positive and negative directions; thus, online disinhibition could be classified as either benign disinhibition or toxic disinhibition.

As with you, we want to be sure that our students - your children - are safe in school and at home. Part of this is making sure that they understand online safety. Knowing that people can behave in a disinhibited way, when online, is a good way to ensure that they stay safe. Please discuss this idea with your children to help strengthen their understanding and your own. We aim to steer them away from anything toxic and knowing that the online world is one that encourages people to act without restraint is a good way to help all of us stay safe.

We are in the final steps of year 11 before they take their final GCSE exams, with only a few weeks to go before your children take their first GCSE exam. As you know, we are always aiming for excellence as a school and we aspire to provide a world class education for our students. As the year 11 have only recently taken their last mock exams, the results will be a good indication of their flight path. However, nothing is decided until the final exams have been sat. To improve on excellent results is probably the hardest challenge, but one that our elite students should not shy away from. Equally, students who have less satisfaction with their results probably have the easiest improvements to make. We strongly encourage all students to approach their revision in an organised way - break down the revision mountain into smaller steps. Prepare revision cards for each curriculum area and by each exam. As parents, we would like you to proactively encourage your children to make a revision timetable and reward them for sticking to it.

If any students are feeling stressed by the pressure of these final exams, they can speak to teachers or find support with Place2Be - our school counselling service - or follow the links above to get advice.

Young Minds have a series of support pages aimed to help with exam stress and anxiety. Their advice is available to help school staff, parents and carers and, of course, young people themselves. You can find this helpful advice at the links below:

School staff

Parents

Young people

Each week we want to celebrate particular students who have won the most praises in their house and in their year group. Keep and eye out for you child aiming for excellence and having their name highlighted here!

Our Thought of the Week, this week, is related to the theme of kindness. Please discuss the thought with your child.