Rhythm For Reading Mentoring Programme
The Rhythm for Reading mentoring programme was the brainchild of Marion Long, founder of Rhythm for Reading, which uses rhythm-based activities to help improve children’s ability to tackle multi-syllabic words, phrases and sentences with greater fluency. Having delivered the scheme in a number of primary schools across the UK, Marion approached Alleyn’s with the idea of running a mentoring programme alongside it as another means of tracking students’ progress in reading. It was not long before we found ourselves embarking on a five-week pilot scheme, during which time five of our Sixth Form students mentored 19 Year 4 students from a local state school, Goodrich Primary School. The students read individually with their mentors for ten minutes each week, following the ten-minute Rhythm for Reading sessions. We have now expanded the scheme and are delivering the mentoring programme within our enrichment sessions. Alleyn’s Sixth Formers have now mentored over 60 Year 5 pupils.
Aims
Strengthening Alleyns’ links with local primary schools;
Providing a primary school with an effective accelerated reading programme;
Providing senior school pupils with an opportunity for enrichment by volunteering in the local community as mentors, helping young children who are struggling with reading, and working towards building a model of best practice illustrating school-to-school partnership in action.
Background
The mentoring programme was the brainchild of Marion Long, founder of Rhythm for Reading, which uses rhythm-based activities to help improve children’s ability to tackle multi-syllabic words, phrases and sentences with greater fluency. Having delivered the scheme in a number of primary schools across the UK, Marion approached Alleyn’s with the idea of running a mentoring programme alongside it as another means of tracking students’ progress in reading.
Resources
Alleyn's currently funds the project at Goodrich. We spend one hour there a week.
Impact
Question
Claire’s
Response
What did you think of the music
programme?
It was fun and interesting.
What did you like about the programme? I liked learning notes and I liked learning
music.
How did it make you feel? It makes me happy and interested in
music.
How was it, when you read in the library? Really fun.
Have you noticed a change in your
reading?
I’ve been able to read more difficult words.
Have you noticed a change in your
concentration?
Yes.
How do you feel about that? I’m excited!
Claire had worked with mentor three from February to March. She made
strong gains in her attitude, engagement, fluency and expression towards the
end of the programme.
In the reading assessments, Claire read three passages in January and
February, but four passages in March. Her reading fluency was measured at
Level 2. Prior to the programme, there were no rhythmically stable sentences
in her baseline reading fluency. She read 43% of the passage in a
rhythmically stable manner in February. In March, 66% of sentences were
rhythmically stable. Claire showed awareness of grammatical elements in
every sentence that she read in each assessment.
Table 6: Claire: Changes in scores between January and March
Accuracy
Comprehension
Rate
2015
Jan
March
Jan
March
Jan
March
Reading
age
07:04
08:06
07:09
9:04
9:02
10:03
Std
score
100
107
102
108
105
113
Fig. 4: Claire: Summary of changes in reading age
Fig. 5: Claire: Mentor observations
Pupil Involvement
Year 12 mentors work with under-achieving Year 3 pupils.
Frequency
Weekly mentoring sessions. This has now been running for two-and-a-half years.