Ridgeway High School won the Innovative and Creative Literacy Award at the prestigious Educate Awards held at Liverpool Anglican Cathedral on Friday 15 November.
Central to the Ridgeway approach to whole-school literacy is an imaginative and highly engaging bespoke reading programme called Reading Routes.
Reading Routes is a comprehensive reading strategy that immerses every student in a world of books, promotes and embeds a culture of reading for pleasure and builds habits for lifelong reading.
We have supported the implementation of Reading Routes with:
Corridor walls are decorated with giant displays – the Reading Routes map itself, graphics highlighting particular books – that help keep Reading Routes high profile.
Our Reading Nook stands proudly in the refectory, filled with a range of books, updated weekly. This space is used daily by students, enabling them to escape and sit in a safe space to read, reflect and recharge.
We invited students to design our nook. The competition winners – Lola Rose and Silverlee (now in year 8) – played an active role with the architects in the final design of the space.
We focus in every subject on teaching new vocabulary, encouraging students to speak and write like subject specialists. Meanwhile, our Lexonik reading intervention programme helps students to rapidly raise their reading age, enabling them to make better progress in their learning not just in English but across all subjects.
Mr Sterry said: “I am thrilled that the school has won this prestigious award. It is a great achievement and recognition of all the hard work that has been done on our fantastic Reading Routes initiative and the Lexonik intervention programme. The award also underlines the importance of the work that goes on in each classroom on a daily basis to ensure that students understand every word that they come across.”
The highly prestigious Educate Awards began in 2012 and has grown into the largest education awards in the north west.
The 2024 Innovative and Creative Literacy Award was sponsored by EdenFiftyOne, and the award itself was presented by EdenFiftyOne’s founder, Tom Reynolds. EdenFiftyOne is an award-winning edtech platform that offers a step-by-step approach to English skills education.
The supplementary information for the Innovative and Creative Literacy Award was as follows:
How has your school, academy or college developed effective and innovative approaches to embedding the development of literacy skills across all levels of learning? We’re looking for shining examples of excellent reading and writing practice with real innovation that has engaged the whole school. Judges particularly want to see how schools have measured these successes and what the outcomes have been.
