10 easy tips for literacy improvement from our Bedrock schools
Find inspiration to improve literacy throughout your school, direct from those who have implemented Bedrock and seen its successes.
1. St Richard’s Catholic College
We reward learners each term based on most lessons completed (by individual and class) and most progress made, with awards for each year group. Learners get a book and a certificate for their first prize, and for subsequent prizes get a £5 voucher.
The class who has completed the most lessons over a term wins a ‘fun English lesson’, which includes watching a film and eating doughnuts, popcorn and sweets. This has really boosted engagement and competition between the year groups.
Winners are mentioned in our termly newsletters and our school Twitter account too.
2. Highworth Grammar School
We share the performance graphs from the Bedrock app with learners to instil competition between classes. We have termly competitions between each class, with the top groups in each year getting chocolates. Each teacher also gives rewards such as merits and house points for learners who do more than two lessons every week.
3. Rastrick High School
Learners complete two Bedrock lessons per week in dedicated literacy lessons. Some learners enjoy the programme so much that they choose to complete more lessons at home, but there is no expectation to do this.
Learners receive a golden ticket for each lesson in which they achieve 75% or more. The tickets are then entered into a raffle to win a £10 voucher. Each half term, the top five Bedrock students – based on leaderboard reports and class point analysis reports – are showcased in a reward presentation.
4. Harris Academy Orpington
Our learners have Bedrock time daily at 2pm. We announce each week how many lessons our learners completed the previous week academy-wide and how many they need to complete this week.
5. Harris Academy Peckham
We hold a ‘Bedrockathon’ - an inter-form challenge - to see which classes can complete two lessons in the space of one hour. Alongside this, we have a series of inter-form games, such as a story game using screenshots from Bedrock and a challenge to turn local Peckham slang into Bedrock words.
6. Harris Boys’ East Dulwich
We have a designated Bedrock page on our school website where we promote Bedrock competitions to learners and parents, and announce winners of past competitions. This motivates students and ensures they know their hard work is recognised among our whole community!
7. John Smeaton Academy
Each week and every half term, we post our top ‘Bedrockers’ and ‘Smeaton Superstars’ – learners who have completed enough lessons to be awarded a £10 voucher – on Twitter. We have also posted a dedicated YouTube video on Twitter to announce the winners in each year group. This makes the learners feel very special.
8. Harris Academy Falconwood
We tweet who our top five Bedrock learners are each week! Learners love being featured on our Twitter.
9. Dame Elizabeth Cadbury School
We shout about our top students on our school Twitter account, posting photos of each learner holding certificates or letters they’ve been awarded for their dedication to Bedrock.
10. Oasis Academy Oldham
We organise a fun school trip for the form group that’s been most consistent with their Bedrock lessons.
Get more inspiration from other Bedrock schools’ implementation strategies in our success stories.
If your school has a favourite strategy, we’d love to hear it. Message your dedicated account manager or tag us on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram to share with our community!
