Wednesday 6 April 2011

Reading Matters!

I was in Leeds today meeting Joan Jacobs, the Chair, and Neil Bennett, the new Chief Executive, of Reading Matters which is a registered charity and not for profit social enterprise based in Bradford...


Reading Matters offers a range of accredited literacy support programmes that can be tailored to suit school requirements.
They also offer a range of training courses that develop one-to-one reading mentor skills for individuals who wish to work in the community, students, parents, learning support staff and Governors. They also recruit, train, place and support a network of reading mentor volunteers to work in secondary schools. Their programmes include the Reading Leader peer mentoring programme, Care 2 Read; an accredited literacy and numeracy training programme to support literacy in the home, a Reading Together workshop to encourage literacy in the home, an accredited Volunteer Mentor Training programme, a bespoke Corporate Volunteer Mentor Training programme and accredited Reading Support Practitioner Training.

An independent evaluation report by Leeds Metropolitan University indicates that young people on these programmes experience an average gain in reading age of 15 months, in terms of word recognition and of 10 months with regard to reading comprehension after just 10 weeks with a Reading Matters volunteer. Young people also improve significantly in terms of reading performance, attitude to reading, confidence in the classroom, self esteem, motivation and speech and language. Volunteers come from all walks of life and from many different backgrounds and form a Volunteer Reading Mentors network which covers more than 100 secondary schools across 10 local authorities supporting young people aged 11-16 who are struggling with their reading skills and confidence.

It was great meeting Joan and Neil and finding out more about this wonderful organisation. You can find out more about Reading Matters by visiting their website at www.readingmatters.org.uk/ and by visiting their blog at gettingreading.blogspot.com/.
Chris

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