At Walthamstow School for Girls we place great importance on developing reading and understanding skills, impacting positively on their learning across the whole curriculum as they progress towards their GCSEs. 

We would encourage our students to read as often as possible. It is recommended that all students read for a minimum of 30 minutes every day - including at the weekends and during school holidays. This is important if students are to continue to develop their literacy levels. 

Reading should be both pleasurable and a way of extending learning.  In addition, this can be a fun activity for all the family - read, discuss and challenge one another in a variety of ways: understanding, changing characters, guess endings, change endings - the ideas are plentiful. 

Students are able to borrow books from the school’s well-resourced LRC, run by our librarian, Ms Kelly.  We also encourage students to swap books and borrow books from their local library. 

Our school has invested in the Renaissance Learning (Accelerated Reading) assessments for students from Years 7 to Year 11. All our students have taken a reading assessment and those students needing support will have literacy interventions to develop their reading and comprehension skills. Those students are given their reading range, which is also known as a ZPD (Zone of Proximal Development), which acts as a guide for students to select books appropriate to their reading level.   

 Accelerated Reader BookFinder

You can check the ZPD range of a book that you have at home by logging on to Accelerated Reader BookFinder which is available to students, parents, teachers and librarians, so they can identify appropriate books that are also of interest.