Ensure mistakes are being picked up in students' work across all subjects: One strategy we've used to improve student literacy is giving all departments training on how to assess and mark writing for accuracy. We give five-minute presentations on ways of checking different mistakes. For example, in one half-term we focused on the use of apostrophes in students' writing. Teachers were reminded of the rules of apostrophes and asked to highlight mistakes in work they marked, irrespective of the subject. The idea behind the approach is to flag up how important accuracy is and make the point that clarity in writing will improve students' grades across all subjects.
Set students a reading challenge: We run a "16 classics before you're 16" challenge, where the upper school students attempt to read 16 classic set texts before they finish year 11. It's proved popular. We've also run a reading challenge where students aim to have read a certain number of books by different points during the year. The books students read are signed off by a teacher, who briefly questions them to check they've been read. Students gain bronze, silver and gold status and lower-ability students can access all of these levels, as the size of the book doesn't matter.