: Alex Leonard – ELE and Reading Lead at Don Valley Academy

I am the Reading Lead at Don Valley Academy, and a Teacher of English; my role involves overseeing our fantastic Reading Hub team whose interventions greatly improve reading fluency and ability for our KS3 cohort. Each year, we see significant reading progress made by our students despite operating in a challenging context. My role also involves leading on all staff training around reading strategies to support with comprehension in the classroom and introducing research-backed methods to support reading fluency. I have also led training sessions for staff around how to increase engagement in lessons through research-based approaches; this training largely centred around the use of structured scaffolding and interactive tasks to boost knowledge and ability.

Click here to read Alex’s blog, ​‘Reading Aloud – An ​‘I do, We do, You do’ model for developing fluency’.