Foundational Knowledge

Reading competency allows pupils to unlock all areas of the curriculum whilst also building emotional resilience and empathy. Ensuring all pupils are competent readers who are encouraged to read for pleasure promotes equity and opportunity at all stages of life. At Holy Cross, we are proud to have an established reading culture where all pupils are exposed to a wide range of rich texts from various times in history and from around the globe.

Our Teacher of Reading Intervention, Miss Leeming, provides one-to-one and small group tuition for our weakest readers to ensure they make accelerated progress and can meet curriculum related expectations across subject areas. Pupils are categorised as red (significantly below the age related expectations – SAS of 85 or below), amber (below age related expectations – SAS between 86 and 99), green (in line with age related expectations – SAS between 100 and 110) or blue readers (above age related expectations – SAS 111 and above).

Miss Leeming delivers a bespoke reading curriculum which focuses on phonics, fluency, prosody and comprehension.  The texts pupils encounter during reading intervention are carefully selected to enhance learning across all areas of the curriculum which complements our interdisciplinary learning approach.  Pupils complete pre-reading on topics they will study in their wider lessons and read texts which help to consolidate their knowledge of the KS3 National Curriculum.

As a result of our reading intervention programme, pupils make accelerated progress and graduate from the programme able to read fluently and access the wider curriculum fully. Data from the reading intervention programme clearly demonstrates the impressive progress pupils make.

Our well-resourced school library is run by Miss Rushton, the Library Manager, and is open to pupils at break, lunch and after school.  We offer a diverse selection of books for pupils to choose from and currently stock over 10,000 texts including a comprehensive selection of specialist magazines which are regularly updated.

View School Library

To promote reading for pleasure and encourage pupils to foster a lifelong reading habit, we highly value meaningful partnerships with parents. Parents whose children struggle with reading and receive intervention are routinely updated on their child’s progress; they are also invited into school for a parental guidance evening in our school library. During this evening, we share reading strategies that parents can instigate at home and encourage parents to browse the library and choose a book with their child.

On a termly basis, all parents receive a recommended reading list in our school newsletter to prompt conversations about reading at home.

Pupils regularly have the opportunity to engage with a wide range of enrichment opportunities linked to reading during their time at Holy Cross. In the academic year 2025 – 2026, pupils participated in a number of educational visits focused upon reading.

• Reading Intervention: multiple visits to feeder primary schools to lead paired reading with KS1 and KS2 pupils
• Reading Intervention and GCSE Art pupils: visit to Astley View Care Home to lead an art and literature project with residents
• Reading Intervention: visits to local care homes in Chorley to read with residents
• Year 9: Chetham’s Library (including a workshop on Marxism) and Manchester Central Library
• Pupil Librarians: Stonyhurst College Library, Archives and Museum

View Literacy Strategy

Numeracy intervention is provided to pupils who are identified as needing additional support by our Lead Teacher of Mathematics, Mrs Cull, during form time. These sessions focus on: number bonds, place value, ordering negatives, multiplication, division, times tables. Telling the time, money and measuring. This ensures that pupils are able to fully access the maths curriculum and wider curriculum areas which routinely rely on maths skills such as geography and science.

Numeracy Strategy

Oracy both within and outside of the classroom is prioritised.  Pupils are equipped to speak confidently, fluently and with appropriate tone and intonation to ensure they are effective communicators.

In recent years, oracy has been prioritised as a key Teaching and Learning initiative.  Teachers prioritise pupils’ spoken language through individual expression of ideas, paired discussion and debate. Within classrooms, teachers utilise ‘Turn and Talk’ to structure paired discussion and encourage extended justification of ideas.

Within form time, pupils who are referred by their primary school or by teaching staff as having a communication and language need receive structured intervention in an eight-week block with our Assistant SENDCo. The intervention identifies pupils’ competency and progress against key communication and language strands; pupils are classified as limited, developing or sustained in each key area. The intervention then focuses on the following six areas by building in difficulty to improve pupils’ communication and language.

• Expanding ideas
• Sequencing ideas
• Explaining and justifying ideas>
• Building conversations
• Speaking with confidence
• Speaking for different audiences

Literacy Strategy

Pupils whose handwriting has not met the expected standard before the transition to secondary school are identified through a comprehensive transition process.  Pupils then receive handwriting intervention which is delivered by a trained Teaching Assistant to focus on dexterity (Tier 1), letter formation (Tier 2) and stamina for writing (Tier 3).  Teaching staff also prioritise the importance of handwriting through high expectations within lessons.