Here are the issues we face: Reading for pleasure at the age of 15 is a strong factor in determining future social mobility. Indeed, it has been revealed as the most important indicator of the future success of the child. - Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development 2013 Books in the home 'boost children's education' (Sunday Telegraph 21 May 2010 ); Reading as teenager gets you a better job (Daily Mirror, 08 Apr 2011 ); Reading for pleasure 'boosts pupils' results in maths' (Times Online, 26 Mar 2010). So, here's a scheme for whole school literacy... designed around making links between texts to provide both progression and access to multiple genres and writing types (in a single reading route). There are 15 reading routes (see Map.pdf). Students choose what they wish to read and use the Reading Logs to record their adventure (see Logs.pdf). There are two parts to the logs, i) an entire route, and ii) a log for each book read. Teachers or a nominated lead should interview students upon completion of the first few chapters (for low abilities), or the entire book, as authentication. I have included Reading-Prompts.pdf and Reading-and-Extension-Questions.pdf for students who have difficulty engaging, comprehending and reflecting on their reading. There is also Iceberg-Thinking.pdf for asking students questions about the texts they've read. These three documents were adapted by me from others work and are available for free elsewhere in my shop. I have freely bundled them here as extra useful resources to support your scheme. Certificates (Certificates.pdf) should then be printed as A5 and inserted into a cheap clipframe for presentation to the student as a mark of their achievement.

If, like me, you massively need to prioritise what is critical against the urgent, important and inane, then this excel organiser is the tool for you: List your jobs in the Job List worksheet and see what you actually need to complete first. Based upon a simple algorithm, you write a short Type reference, followed by the task itself, specify whether it is important (with a y) or rank the task's importance from 1 (low) to 5 (high), and either provide a due date or select the urgency level from 1 (low) to 5 (high). The spreadsheet will do the well, providing you with a functional list and a visual grid to help your understand when you're working effectively and when you're wasting time.

An Excel spreadsheet which allows you to quickly plan out your lessons to the minute - particularly useful for new teachers. This version is set up for a school with an alternate Friday structure to the rest of the week. But this can be altered with minimal fuss. Further, if you buy this and need assistance in converting it for your school, contact me and provide with the breakdown of your school day(s), and I will gladly personalise it for you.

How often do you remember to give students their due praise? How about, passing that onto parents? Edit the Header, alter the details for your own name, school, email, etc, and print as 4 postcards on 1 A4 sheet. Print, cut and get writing those positive comments. Get the parents on side and include them in their children's' education.

A simple, straightforward guide to safeguarding through: Listen Feedback Respond Refer

DfES (2013) states “... absence ha[s] a statistically significant negative link to attainment.” (p.4). Anecdotally, Ofsted inspectors report they assess exercise books to uncover how schools ensure progress for students missing school. Here's my offering, a template (and 12 examples from the year)... an absence intervention sheet that doubles up as a concise way to plan a lesson. The idea is that you provide all the main lesson details and content, from objectives to a model, keywords, textual content and questions - you can even double-side print to ensure more info is available. It's essentially a Knowledge Organiser for one lesson. When your absent student returns, rather than have them do the starter, give them the printout, ask them to stick it in their books and read through. Expect them to have completed the tasks by next lesson or along with the next homework hand-in.