Scholarly Reading

Scholarly reading and disciplinary reading

Research shows that reading widely around your studies helps build and contextualise your subject knowledge, and additionally allows you to engage with fresh and current thinking. It also allows us to see how individual subjects relate to the outside world and to experience some of the most important ideas from some of the greatest minds in subject disciplines. As pupils progress through an increasingly specialized subject curriculum, there is a growing need to ensure that they are trained to access the academic language and conventions of different subjects’ writing. Within school we therefore place a strong focus on scholarly reading with every new topic being prefaced with key texts. The ‘Scholarly Reading’ programme aims to encourage our students to read more around each subject they study and increase their ‘cultural capital’ and knowledge of the world around them. The texts that students read always relate to the subjects they are taught, but will cover issues, topics or incidents in greater depth and sometimes from different, new and refreshing angles. Departments identify texts which will stimulate students’ interest and encourage discussion taking students beyond the National Curriculum. This is an opportunity for pupils to experience the best writing and ideas from subject disciplines and provides the necessary exposure to Tier 2 and Tier 3 vocabulary (this is the vocabulary of the subject expert). The ‘Scholarly Reading’ encountered at St Aidan’s texts are thought-provoking, dense and technical and build rapidly upon experiences from primary school. Staff have been well trained in school, and are proficient in ‘unlocking’ these texts for pupils of all reading abilities.