In a nutshell

Watch this short 2 minute film that summarises my work as a community consultant to help jump-start struggling readers with decoding and comprehension interventions.

It also looks quickly at the 'Rocket Kids' session which brings creativity and literacy together with reactions from various head teachers including a literacy advsier to a local authority and the legendary Vic Goddard, Headteacher of Passmores Academy, as seen in Educating Essex.

Reading - The reality

As a fairly well educated dad who thought he'd done his best for his own sons, I've really had my eyes opened  by this work that's run in parallel with my creativity journey.

I was stunned to find that in the UK, an average of as many as 20% of children leave primary school unable to read to the expected level.

This may be down to a number of factors, maybe the way they were taught phonics didn't work for them, maybe they have some learning difficulties or family background challenges.

Either way they're heading for trouble in secondary and beyond, at best locked out of the curriculum and at worst locked up in jail.

I've been lucky enough to connect with a relatively new but innovative company that has done a lot of work helping readers in the developing world and has bought its revolutionary approach to the UK.

A solution

I'm a community consultant with ReadingWise who have developed two innovative interventions for Decoding and Comprehension: 

• Empowering - after just an hour of CPD, TA's are able to support struggling readers' use of the intervention

• Impact - The decoding module has been shown to raise reading age by 9 months after just 20 hours use

• Reach - groups of ten learners can use the system at a time so it's much more effective than 1:1 interventions

Find out more about and see the Decoding and Comprehension interventions.

HoW I can help you

As a trained and supported community consultant for ReadingWise I am able to demonstrate their interventions and offer CPD sessions to give your colleagues, be they literacy specialists, SENCO's or TA's the background and skills they need to run a trial and use the system.

• CPD sessions - I can give your colleagues (literacy specialists, SENCos, TA's, SLT) a personalised training session (in house or online) on these interventions and train them to run a trial.

• Intervention trials - after training, I can arrange free two week trial of the Decoding or Comprehension interventions.

• Rocket Kids - I can combine a training visit with a STEAM Co. 'Rocket Kids' session - a whole school assembly, real rocket firing and activity workshop that uniquely brings creativity and literacy together. You have to see it to believe it! More here...

• Literacy workshops - to meet the needs of MATs or LEAs, I can run a 1.5 hour literacy workshop drawing together and sharing various literacy strategies from the group for decoding and comprehension, combines with training to enable all delegates to go away and try the ReadingWise interventions free of charge.

See the short film above of the reaction after one of my sessions with a fantastic primary school in North London and have a look at the case studies on the other pages in this section.

Inspiring Essex with VIC GOddard

The film on the right shows comments from Vic Goddard, Headteacher at Passmore's Academy in Harlow, and star of Channel 4's Educating Essex TV series after I did a STEAM Co. 'Rocket Kids' session in his primary school.

BOOK A SESSION NOW

If you're in a Primary or Secondary School - KS2 to KS3, then do get in touch via the form below.

[ReadingWise and these Decoding and Comprehension interventions are © IdeasWise Ltd 2016 - used with permission]