Excellence Awards

19th February 2016 - Catch Up® Excellence Awards: Ysgol John Bright, - BRONZE award winner (Catch Up® Literacy)

Organisation: Ysgol John Bright
Intervention: Catch Up® Literacy
Submitted by: Mrs S A Mayall

Background
Ysgol John Bright is an English medium school greatly respected in the community it serves. Ysgol John Bright is a school which values every individual, all students and all staff, teaching and non-teaching, as part of our learning community. We aim to provide a stimulating and well-managed learning environment which maximises individual potential and equips students of all abilities to meet the challenges of education, work and life in the 21st Century.
Ysgol John Bright has found that by using the Catch Up® Literacy intervention, it supports our lower ability students and allows them to improve their literacy skills and their access to the full school curriculum. Catch Up® Literacy also provides data that clearly shows the continued improvement of the students that are using the intervention.

Implementation
The Year 7 learning mentor works with just Year 7 students supporting Literacy and wellbeing. She works closely with the Director of Learning and also the ALNCO. The students are timetabled to receive regular Catch Up® sessions. The school receives standardised scores from the students’ primary schools; our school will check through all the data and then target the lower ability students first. The students are then assessed using the Catch Up® Literacy assessments booklet and then start their intervention using the appropriate levelled book. Each student is provided with a folder and all the sessions are recorded and kept as evidence data. Each individual session is recorded and dated; the individual sheets provide information for the staff. The student is encouraged to talk about the book, what they think of it and what might happen next. All miscues are recorded and one will be picked out to discuss and rewrite by the student. The teacher will set a target for the next session and the student will write a comment about the book.
The Director of Learning oversees all the interventions, and the learning mentor will make sure that the Catch Up® sessions are delivered to a high quality standard by providing the booklets and individual session sheets, by organising the books into levels and updating the books on a regular basis. She also checks the progress of all the students to see if any adjustments need to be made to accommodate their learning needs.

Case Study 1 - Catch Up® Literacy
Student A came into Ysgol John Bright with a standardised score of 64. The student had very little literacy knowledge and was struggling to read low ability reading books. This often became quite frustrating for the student and it was having a negative impact on their learning. The student was tested using the Catch Up® Literacy assessments, and they began the individual sessions using the appropriate book. The student started on Catch Up® Literacy level 4, and progress was reviewed on a regular basis by the ALNCO. The student carried on with Catch Up and later went into Year 8 reading Catch Up level 12, with a standardised score of 85.
Student B came into Ysgol John Bright with a standardised score of 64. The student was struggling with his reading. He was assessed using the Catch Up® assessments and started on Catch Up® Literacy level 5. After completing the intervention, Student B had moved onto Catch Up® level 11 and had a standardised score of 72.

Both students made excellent progress and went on to improve their own attitude and access to learning.

Aims
Our aim is to transform the life chances of our all students and to set them on their way to happy and successful lives. Educationalists suggest that all young people will learn, enjoy, succeed and thrive in a first-rate educational environment, with the best facilities, the best teaching and the most up-to-date resources available to them. We strive to provide all of these. We want to become the:

  • Education provider of choice for the students

  • Employer of choice for the staff

  • Investment of choice for the parents

  • Centre of choice for community learning and engagement