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“The volunteer miraculously opened our son up to enjoying to read. My happy son was back. Words cannot express our family’s appreciation for the volunteers.”
Parent
Motivation & encouragement.
One-to-one support from a trained volunteer.
A variety of activities & focus on key reading skills.
The commitment and caring of another person.
Reading for Life’s success is a result of a combination of key factors:
- pre-testing of children to ensure their suitability and understand their learning difficulties & post-testing to measure gains and determine if further assistance is needed;
- a variety of activities to enhance children’s interest and chance of success;
- a focus on enhancing children’s self-esteem;
- training and support for volunteers; and
- special relationships between children and people outside family and school who want to help them succeed.
Schools can be wonderful places of fun and learning. Unfortunately for children who struggle to learn, this is not always the case.
Given the size of classes, teachers often find it challenging to provide children with individual attention and literacy support. Children with learning difficulties may struggle in this environment and, unlike children with more recognisable disabilities, they may not have access to additional funding or support.
Children who have difficulty learning at school have to work harder to
succeed.
They usually receive more negative feedback about their work and may feel frustrated, angry, depressed, anxious and worthless.
How a child perceives their school performance is important. If they feel good about their school performance and ability, there is every chance they will go on to a good career and expect success in their life and achieve more academically in school.
Children who struggle to read like their friends often feel they can’t learn. This can lead to far-reaching social implications such as poor behaviour, poor social relations and eventually delinquency. Learning and literacy is an important issue if we want children to have the best chance of success.
Reading for Life offers additional support to these children. It goes further than many reading programs that simply have volunteers reading with
children.
The content of the program provides routine and predictability for children, yet contains a variety of activities to encourage engagement and interest.
It incorporates phonemic awareness activities to help children become better readers, enhances self-esteem to promote reading ability and focuses on praising effort rather than outcome to encourage motivation.
Each 45-minute session is divided into the following activities:
- building the relationship;
- sight words and vocabulary;
- knowledge of sounds;
- reading; and
- celebrating effort.
The program also actively involves families and classroom teachers.
Classroom teachers and parents are invited to a school orientation session where children first meet their Reading Buddy. They are also invited to an end of program celebration. During the program, children and volunteers use a communication book to provide feedback to teachers and parents.
Each participating child is tested before the program using standardised tests to determine their learning strengths and weaknesses and provide a baseline for a final test at the end. The testing is critical to ensure that children participating will benefit from the program. Test results are provided in a written report to teachers and parents.
One of the key elements for success is the relationship between the volunteer Reading Buddy and the child. This relationship is fostered by careful matching of buddies and the content of the volunteers' training.
Volunteers report forming a special bond with children as they encourage, praise and motivate their buddy to succeed. The initial training and support provided to volunteers gives them the necessary information about children’s learning problems and inspiration to be a successful Reading Buddy.
“I want to do it the rest of my life. Even if I’m in Year 6 I’d still do it.” Child
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