Impact Showcase – Ready Steady Write & Comprehension at Mill View Primary
On Wednesday, July 3rd, 2024, we hosted a showcase event at one of our Flagship Schools, Mill View Primary in Chester, which proved to be an immensely productive gathering. Literacy curious Headteachers and English Subject Leads from across the country converged to witness how Mill View Primary has seamlessly integrated Ready Steady Write and Ready Steady Comprehension into their entire curriculum. It was a great opportunity for these school leaders to see how our literacy solutions could improve outcomes in their school.
The event offered a comprehensive insight into various aspects of the school's literacy success. Attendees explored learning environments, classrooms, and resources – all supported by the resource membership. Delegates delved into the impact on staff, including outcomes, workload reduction and best practices. The favourite activity of the delegates was the ‘Pupil Voice Stations’. Here children from each year group proudly shared the journey of a Ready Steady Write unit from their initial Immerse Lessons to their final writing outcome which is always published into a beautiful display book. They were very excited to talk about their comprehension tasks too.
During the event, I spoke to a few of the children who were articulating their love for their Ready Steady Write lessons so beautifully:
“My favourite part about Ready Steady Write is when we get to the planning lessons and you draft your writing. After working hard, you get time to write all your ideas down in this part of the sequence. In other lessons you’re building ideas but when I get to draft my writing, I can finally write all my ideas down from my head.”
“I love it when we get to ‘publish’ our writing. It’s cool because you get proper books (shows work) that use the same artwork as the book (‘Vehicle Text’) we’ve been learning from, and you use special pens to write your story like a real author would. You spend weeks building up to this point so it’s a very proud moment.”
“The best part is making it (their writing) my own. You have the main book (‘Vehicle Text’) and ‘Example Text’ which are good, but you can add your own words and make changes. For example, I really liked this fronted adverbial (shows work), so I decided to make it my own and make it fit into my own story. There are 30 children in our class, but no one has the same story and it’s good because you can read each other’s stories and they’re all completely different even though we’ve all used the texts.”
Delegates also had the opportunity to hear Leadership Voices.
“For us Literacy Counts have been great because they have helped us have whole school consistency and brought an ease to being the English subject lead. We have a new ECT that still has been able to access training which again helps out with school consistency. We really appreciate having everything at our fingertips within the membership.”
“Over the past six years, our school has successfully implemented the Ready Steady Write and then Ready Steady Comprehension schemes. We piloted Ready Steady Write initially, but this snowballed quickly, and the Ready Steady Write texts now form the basis of our curriculum design.
We do not claim to be the ‘best’, but we do recognise the part the Literacy Counts resources have played in our school improvement plans and we have adapted the resources to suit our children in our context. The schemes have provided us with a consistent framework for teaching reading and writing across the school, allowing us as leaders to monitor progress more effectively.
The recent introduction of the Ready Steady Write online platform has been particularly beneficial. Staff have welcomed this update, noting a reduction in workload. The prepared Sentence Accuracy activities have proved both popular and effective.
Overall, the consistency offered by the schemes, coupled with the new online tools, has enhanced both teaching practices and children’s learning outcomes in our school. Reading data for Key Stage One and Key Stage Two last year exceeded the national average and our recent OFSTED noted that we were challenging our more able children and giving them access to a higher level of text.
For me the proof of the success of these schemes at Mill View is in the outcomes we are seeing for our disadvantaged learners. The scaffolding that the resources provided gives these children an additional advantage. These resources support staff in raising their expectations of all children and have raised engagement levels considerably in reading and writing.”
Thank you Mill View Primary
We just want to say a huge thank you to everyone at Mill View for making our event such a joyous occasion. It was wonderful to see students speaking so passionately and confidently about their writing and reading. The delegates who attended couldn't stop talking about how impressed they were with the student presentations and the fantastic learning environments you've created. Thank you!
If you would like to find out more about Mill View Primary School, please explore their website. They are part of the Cheshire Academies Trust.
Ready Steady Write (new and improved Read to Write) is comprehensive and evidence based. It provides a sequenced, ambitious curriculum, that places quality literature at its core. Our units have been carefully mapped out to match the entire statutory curriculum for writing. And now there is an exciting update! The new PLUS+ features (free for members) encompass new units including Shakespeare (Year 2 - Year 6), Olympics (EYFS - Year 6) and many more to come! These Ready Steady Write PLUS+ units offer more choice for your school while supporting curriculum design.
Ready Steady Comprehension (formally known as Steps to Read) is planning support for whole class Shared Reading through carefully crafted units of work. They empower teachers to effectively teach reading and comprehension through high-quality fiction, non-fiction and poetry texts. Ready Steady Comprehension provides a clear teaching sequence to reading sessions that explicitly teach reading skills and strategies in a cumulative way through evidence-based approaches.
See the impact in your school and get your free sample access today by emailing hello@literacycounts.co.uk, calling 07522 514759 or visiting www.literacycounts.co.uk.
