Student Support

Lead SENCo – Mrs Kate Wilson – Vice Principal

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 Halifax, 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! You might wonder why it is called ‘The Landmark Dash’! This is because for every activity in the booklet you complete, you can cross off a landmark. There is even a chance for students to do some independent study and research a landmark of their choice.

Number of hours per week: 7

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’s also about learning the skills you will need to be more confident and effective in all of your lessons. You’ll need to be ready and well-prepared for the reading, writing, speaking and listening skills you’ll need in later years. We all have different strengths and weaknesses. It’s 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. In Year 7, you will follow an adapted phonics programme, completing 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. In Years 8 and 9, each lesson will have a phonics theme, but you will study topics that go beyond the national curriculum. The topics and lessons are carefully planned to spark your interest, develop your knowledge of the wider world and give you extra cultural and current affairs knowledge to show off with in your mainstream lessons. 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/.

Number of hours per week: 4

This is a less intensive form of Nurture literacy support and is designed for students who need support with their reading and writing skills but do not need as much support as those students who follow the Nurture pathway.

Number of hours per week: 2

The Bungee programme supports students who need to build their writing resilience. It is a programme that students follow for one half term only. The programme has been developed with reference to the EEF’s report entitled ‘Improving Literacy at KS2’. Within this report it states that ‘fluent writing supports composition because pupils’ cognitive resources are freed from focusing on handwriting, spelling, and sentence construction, and can be redirected towards writing composition’.

The intent of this programme is that students develop the skills to maintain and improve the speed of, legibility of and physical approach to handwriting. They will also build their knowledge of essential spelling, punctuation, and grammar rules. Finally, they will further develop their writing, editing and proofreading skills. Prior to writing anything down in their creative writing lessons, students will articulate their ideas verbally as this supports their thinking and use of language.

 

Number of hours per week: 4

Platinum is a cross-curricular reading programme, run by the English department. This reading-based intervention programme ensures that students who meet specific criteria in Years 7, 8 and 9, have the knowledge and skills to read at chronological age and further develop a love of reading. Platinum lessons focus on:

  • Reading fluency, confidence and enjoyment of reading
  • Understanding words in context
  • Asking questions, discussing and explaining
  • Inference and justification
  • Prediction
  • Summary
  • Identification of language, structure and presentation
  • Retrieval and recording.
Ofsted Outstanding Provider
Trinity Scholars

Trinity Scholar students benefit from an additional investment of up to £6000

Click to find out more!