Year 7 Catch Up Literacy Intervention

Due to the new GCSE becoming more challenging, it is imperative that all of our students start from a ‘level playing field’. Year 7 students that have come to Burton Borough with less than 100 on their Reading and Grammar SAT Papers are receiving Catch-Up Intervention with Mr Dunbar, our Whole School Literacy Lead. The Intervention Program aims to get students working at the same level as their peers, as quickly as possible.

Students have been put into small groups. Each student undertakes a variety of baseline assessments to help assess their literacy needs. It is a half termly intervention program for improving students’ reading skills, along with spelling, punctuation and grammar through a range of activities. Students’ reading ages and spelling ability will be regularly monitored using the ‘Accelerated Reader’ programme and ‘Spellzone’.

Please direct any queries about literacy intervention to Mr Dunbar via our contact form and select 'English' from the drop down menu so that it reaches Mr Dunbar.

Year 7 Catch up Numeracy Intervention

Students who have entered year 7 this year are being taught in mixed attainment sets, giving all students the chance to thrive and develop their mathematical skills without preconceptions.

Over the course of the first term of the academic year, all students have been closely monitored through a range of quizzes, topic assessments and whole year group examinations.  In addition to this, prior attainment (KS2 SATs results) and teacher feedback has been taken into account.  The data has been analysed by the Numeracy Lead (Miss J Pickering), and in the Spring term an intervention programme has been put in place for those students who have been identified as needing extra support.

Small group intervention takes place either within the SEND department (as part of a wider programme of work with these students) or with the Numeracy team during CLL sessions once or twice a fortnight; the students have been grouped depending on their individual needs and a personalised plan of learning is in place for them to improve their knowledge, confidence and resilience in numeracy based activities.

Baselines have been taken from the year group assessment and both participation and progress will be recorded and shared with families as appropriate.

Funding Allocation

For 2017-18 year and the 2016-17 year we have received £10,500 in catch up funding. We have used this money to help support the year 7's with one to one tutoring, with specialist subject teachers from within the school. We believe that this approach the best way to support pupils in making exceptional progress. 

Catch up Impact

Over the course of last year, the students who took part in the catch up intervention saw some outstanding results. Through STAR reading test students who the intervention increased their reading ages considerably with all students increasing reading ages between 5 months to 2 years and 4 months. We are hoping to build on this progress this year and will publish our results once the intervention programme has been completed.