Teaching literacy is a focus for all of our teachers at Wimbledon College no matter what subject that they teach. We know that unlocking a student’s passion for reading can have significant educational and long-term benefits to their future careers and life experiences. Our focus this year has been trying to increase student’s enjoyment and engagement with texts,  below are a selection of the initiatives that our students can engage with.

Recommended Reading Lists
Our departments have collated a list of fiction and non-fiction books that they feel students would enjoy across the different key stages. These are to enhance enjoyment and engagement with the subject, as well as reading in general. The lists can be found here.

Rudiments and Poetry paired reading scheme
Every Friday tutor period, our Rudiments boys read aloud to Poetry students from the same house. This is to try and support their confidence in reading in front of their peers. This has been a great success and is an example of collaborative working at the College

Figures library visit
We organise a trip with every Figures English class to Wimbledon Library with their English teacher. They are issued with Merton library cards and encouraged to borrow books, these can be physical copies or e-books.

Whole class texts
For Figures and Rudiments students, one English lesson a fortnight is dedicated to studying a class text. Students read aloud and listen to the teacher reading with a focus on demonstrating fluency and expression. The texts used are:

• The Nowhere Emporium (Ross MacKenzie) for Figures sets A and 1
• Eleven (Tom Rogers) for Figures sets 2 and 3
• Scythe (Neal Shusterman) for Rudiments sets 1 and A
• The Windrush Child (Benjamin Zephaniah) for Rudiments sets 2 and 3

Rolling read
During the Spring term, on specific days at the start of each lesson, pupils in Lower Line listen to an extract from a short story read to them by teachers and prefects. As they move from lesson to lesson, more of the story is revealed to them before reaching the end during period 6.

Jack Pechey ‘Speak out challenge’
To help develop students’ oracy skills, each year approximately 60 Grammar students are chosen to take part in the Jack Pechey ‘Speak  Out Challenge’. This is a public speaking workshop with focus on how to plan, structure, write and deliver an effective speech.  In 2023 six boys went through to the School Assembly Final in December, from which we sent our two winners, Neal, talking about global access to clean drinking water, and Hunor, talking about The Power of Nostalgia, through to the Merton Final to be held in March 2024.

Tier 2 words
Our departments have focused on developing students’ vocabulary by picking five key tier 2 words to teach this term. These are high-frequency but complex words that may arise in multiple subjects that students are learning. For example, coincide, industrious, adjacent, futile etc.

Young Writers’ Competition
Each year students are given the opportunity to enter the Bookfest Young Writers' Competition. Students can choose to enter either a short story or a poem relating to a given theme. The competition launches in the middle of March and the deadline is usually the end of April.

Creative writing workshop
A Level Year 12 students in collaboration with London Metropolitan University, have had a visiting creative writing professor lead a workshop about ideas and developing their creative writing techniques. A ‘boot camp’ will take place in February at Aldgate East campus where pupils will work on refining and re-drafting their initial ideas.