The library at Heritage High School is called the Hive. It is a colourful, welcoming and popular space that has been designed to inspire students to read for pleasure.
The library is open to students for reading and quiet study at brunch and lunch times.
It is also open for homework and extra-curricular clubs from 3pm-4pm on Monday-Thursday.
The library provides comfy seating areas in addition to desks. There are also 20 pcs that students can use for homework and research and for taking Accelerated Reader quizzes.
We have a well-stocked library, which is regularly updated to ensure that all students can find books that they will enjoy. Our aim is to develop all our students into inquisitive, critical and empathetic readers. We add books to our library with this in mind. We also order books based on student requests and recommendations, as we recognise that the students play a crucial role in sharing stories and encouraging their peers to read for pleasure.
Students in year 7 and 8 are enrolled on the Accelerated Reader programme. This is a programme which allows us to reward students for effort and engagement with reading and track the progress they make with their literacy skills. When students finish a book that is on Accelerated Reader they can take an online quiz about that book. This provides evidence of their reading and shows their understanding of what they have read.
Using Accelerated Reader allows us to reward students for a range of achievements including: completing a reading challenge, the number of books read and the number of words read.
Students are awarded reading achievement badges for the following achievements:
- Passing 25 book quizzes – Bronze Award
- Passing 50 book quizzes – Silver Award
- Passing 100 book Quizzes – Gold Award
- Reading over a million words – Millionaire’s Club Award
- We also have a number of reading challenges that students can take part in over the year and students set their own challenges at any time, to motivate themselves to reach a personal goal.
Accelerated Reader assigns each book on it’s programme with a difficulty level which is indicated by a coloured label on the book’s spine. The four colour levels in the library are: blue, yellow, red and brown. Using the levelling system allows students to easily find books that will provide them with a good level of challenge. We currently have over 3,500 different titles on Accelerated Reader, that students can take quizzes on after they read them.
Our fiction books are grouped by colour first, and within the colour levels they are grouped A-Z by author. There is also an area in the library for non-fiction Accelerated Reader books. These are grouped by colour level first and then by topic.
Non-fiction books that are not on Accelerated Reader are organised using the Dewey Decimal System. There are guides available to help students find where books on the topics they are studying are located.
The library is run by the LRC Manager, Ms Edwards, who can be contacted on alison.edwards@heritage.ttct.co.uk
