ABC to Read (Assisting Berkshire Children to Read)
Are you passionate about literacy and education? Do you have experience working with children or teaching in schools? Join our team in Berkshire as a volunteer trainer and help us deliver extended services.
What will you be doing?
As a volunteer trainer, you will play a crucial role in equipping students and parents with the tools and strategies needed to support students in improving their reading skills. Your expertise will directly impact the academic success of students and contribute to building a stronger community.
You will work alongside our volunteer trainer and trustee (retired headteacher) to help us deliver more workshops into schools. Through our core work of providing 1-1 support in primary we have quickly realised that students haven't developed strong literacy skills in primary school, they are struggling to keep up with the more advanced reading and writing demands in secondary school so we have expanded our services by providing buddy workshops and workshops to parents but we need more people to help us deliver this project.
Potential volunteers will work alongside another trainer and once confident then they may be asked to deliver a workshop alone. We also ensure that a member of staff or another volunteer is supporting the workshops being delivered by each trainer.
ABC to read was set up in 2004 and helps hundreds of children each week who struggle to read. ABC to read are a Queens Award and Investing in Volunteers Award charity.
We recruit, train and support volunteers from your local community to act as an ABC reading helper. Schools allocate three children to work with each helper who are struggling to read and lack confidence. Ideally, they will spend 30 minutes with each child twice a week, reading, chatting and playing games. They focus on the child's successes and build the child's reading confidence using a range of general literacy resources provided by us. Teachers tell us that this brings benefits in many areas, not just improved literacy.
Each child the school refers spends one hour in total each week with their ABC to read helper. On average ABC reading helpers stay with the same children for three to four terms. This undivided attention pays dividends. Our latest evaluation data shows that on average the children we support showed minimal or no progress in their reading the year prior to receiving support from a reading helper. However once they were working with a reading helper their progress improved by an average approximately 2 sub-levels after three terms' support.
Our unique volunteering approach:
* We can only do the work that we do, and make a big difference to many children's lives, thanks to our amazing volunteers.
* Each one of our volunteer reading mentors works with up to 3 children to support them in building their skills, confidence and motivation.
* They talk and listen; share books; explore various kinds of reading material; play games; make things and draw together.
* We hold the 'Investing in Volunteers' accreditation that ensures our volunteers gain the best volunteering experience.
* The most important thing is that the children feel happy and successful and can start to think of reading as something they enjoy.
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Flexible scheduling to accommodate your availability. The workshops generally happen once every other month for 2 hours but if we have more people to help with this project then we may be able to offer more into Berkshire schools. Workshop times vary depending on the school requests but they are generally run during school hours, term time only.
West Berkshire
We require community volunteers to support children within local primary schools that are struggling with...
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