SWGS believes reading and literacy should be a central part of both our academic curriculum, and also enrich our students’ lives. Our vision is to be a ‘reading school’, and we do this through three key underpinning approaches:

1. CULTURE: We value reading and have a culture of reading: every member of the community is a reader
2. ACADEMIC: Academic and disciplinary literacy plays a central role enabling students to be readers
3. SUPPORT: All must be able to access this culture

A detailed version of what this means in practice can be found in the pdf document ‘Literacy – the SWGS Approach’. In addition:

• In the ‘Curriculum’ section of the website, you can find subject extended reading lists and subject-specific vocabulary.
• In the ‘News’ section of the website, you can find the LRC newsletters, as well as the student newspaper, The Tartan Times.
• In the ‘Key Information’ section of the website, you can find information about our library including recent additions, and our EDI reading lists, including books related to Black Heritage, Disability, Neurodivergence, East Asian Heritage, LGBTQ+ and South Asian Heritage.

We hope that these pages will give you a strong sense of the reading culture, academic literacy and support that we seek to offer our students around reading and literacy.

Staffing

We are very fortunate to have two school librarians, Ms F Noble and Dr E Hampshire.

In addition, two of our teachers co-ordinate the school’s approach to Literacy and reading: Mrs A Chiddy-Gosling (Teacher of English) who is responsible for culture and support, and Dr M Nolan (Associate Assistant Headteacher) who oversees the SWGS approach to academic literacy.