Literacy Skills Boost Session letter

9th October 2023

Dear Parent/ Carer,

I am writing to inform you about Boost sessions we are putting in place to support your child with their literacy skills. After recent assessments, we have identified that your child is working slightly below the expected standard in English. This could be due to many factors, and is possibly linked to lessons missed due to the pandemic. Your child has been identified as a ‘boundary leaper’. This means that with a short burst reading fluency interventions and increased reading for pleasure at home we believe they can meet age related expectations for reading by the end of this academic year. We feel that it is important to put measures in place to support your child; therefore, we are organising some extra literacy sessions in order to bring them up to the expected standard for their age.

We are delighted to inform you that a qualified English tutor will lead these sessions during normal school hours. The aim of these intervention sessions is to enhance and support your child’s learning and confidence in English. We are planning to use a range of activities to develop their reading, writing and spelling, and we will test them again at the end of the unit to check their progress. We will keep you informed regarding their progress and will be setting additional work for them to complete at home, in order to boost their development throughout the scheme. We are also asking students to read every day, so this will also involve them keeping a record of their reading.

This tuition will take place during normal school hours. However, there are some requirements listed below:

1.   Students must arrive 2 minutes before the session starts and be ready to start on time.
2.   They should have high effort levels in their regular lessons in school. If their class teacher reports they are not making an effort, they will then be unable to attend extra tuition. 
3.   Any homework set for the week by the English tutor must be completed by the following session. 

I hope you agree that these interventions will help to support your child’s understanding and application of knowledge in language and literature, and look forward to working together to support them and their progress. 

Thanks in advance for your support.

Yours faithfully,

Caroline Burton

Whole School Literacy Lead