Summer 2021 Newsletter

 In news page

An update from us

We sent our last newsletter out at the end of last year and, at that point, I think we were all expecting a swifter return to something resembling normal life. That clearly hasn’t been possible which has meant that we haven’t had any volunteers in schools to provide one-to-one reading support. However, just because we haven’t been able to place any of our wonderful volunteers in our partner schools, doesn’t mean we haven’t been busy. There have been a number of projects that we’ve been able to continue with and some new activities that we’ve been able to get off the ground that build on our successful Reading Challenge.
We’re looking forward to getting back into schools and being able to provide that one-to-one support again, which we anticipate being able to do in the autumn term, depending on government guidance. In the meantime, you can find out what we’ve been up to below.

Reading Challenge

Last year’s autumn term saw the launch of our reading challenge. The aim of the challenge was to encourage children to continue with their reading throughout lockdowns and the wide disruption caused by Covid-19 through a simple reading reward scheme.

Open to the entire school, each child taking part is encouraged to read eight books each term, working through their reading chart and earning our Super Reader stickers along the way. On completion of the challenge they receive a Ready Steady Read Reading Reward Certificate and entry into a prize draw which is awarded to our lucky winners at the end of each term.

The feedback from the nine schools that participated was incredibly positive, from both teachers and children alike, with one teacher saying:

“We’ve loved taking part in the reading challenge. All of our children from
F1 to Year 6 have taken part and it has allowed us to further promote
reading successfully across the school… The prizes really do work as a
valuable incentive for the more reluctant readers.”

Based on this feedback, we decided to continue the reading challenge and incorporate into our long-term support for schools alongside one-to-one reading support. Since launching last autumn term, the scheme has grown with 13 schools taking part during the most recent summer term. Across those 13 schools 3,334 children participated in the challenge and collectively read a staggering 43,342 books between them! They have now received their well-deserved Super Reader stickers and Reward Certificates and some children were also lucky enough win our end of term Reading Challenge Prizes.

Reader of the Week

In January, during lockdown, we started this new scheme with the generous support of Sewell FM. The aim of the scheme was to encourage children to continue with their reading – whether they were in school or learning remotely from home.

Each participating school awards one of their children one of our reader of the week prizes, which typically consist of one of our Ready Steady Read book bags, containing a book, bookmark, Super Reader badge and certificate.
This initiative wouldn’t be possible without the support of our generous sponsors and donors. Seven schools took part in the first half of the spring half term which was sponsored by Sewell FM. In the second half of the spring half term – from February to Easter, the scheme was sponsored by SPS Securities Ltd with 13 schools taking part. The summer term was sponsored by ICS Cleaning Services with 13 schools taking part and 143 prize winners over the 11-week term.

We have also recently secured the support of another Hull business – Adams & Green. They will be sponsoring the reader of the week scheme in the autumn term when we have 17 schools taking part.
In addition to this support from our business sponsors, we were also contacted by Rich Sutherland from Hull based digital marketing company Sobananapenguin. Rich is a copywriter and fiction writer and he contacted us because he would like to make regular donations of new books to the charity. He has committed to supplying us with a number of new books each month which we have begun to use as prizes in the reading challenge.

Once again, the feedback from schools and children about the reader of the week programme has been hugely positive some comments from the children who won books as part of the programme are below:

Sky: “Winning reader of the week made me feel happy and I liked it.
I love reading and it’s one of my hobbies. I’m really enjoying the
book I was given as a winner,”
Maya: “I can’t believe I won reader of the week as I love reading.
The book I got was really good and I finished it really quick.”

A teacher at one of our schools said:
“Not all of our children have many books at home. Therefore we ensure that
we provide as many opportunities as possible for pupils to be able to
take books home to keep and treasure.”

Longhill Primary request

In January we were contacted by Run With It, one of our partners that we have worked with in the past. They had been contacted by Longhill Primary School who had asked whether we would be able to provide them 30 copies of their Y1 class reading text for children to use in their Zoom lessons.

We reached out to one of our supporters, Lovel Developments (Yorkshire) LTD, and were able to secure funding to cover the cost of the books. As a result of this, Longhill Primary has also signed up to participate in our reading schemes too.

Schools Libraries Service partnership

At the start of the year, we met with Hull School Libraries Service to discuss how we could work together to encourage children to continue with their reading. We explained to them how our one-to-one support works and gave them an overview of our other programmes, working with many vulnerable children in some of the most disadvantaged areas of the city. Through this conversation we explained that many of the children we work with have very limited access to books at home and how the situation was even more challenging due to lockdown restrictions.

As a result of this, Hull Schools Libraries Service offered to donate some of their second-hand books, either for use in classrooms or for children to ensure that they have access to books at home.

The service donated around 1,500 books, which we added to 250 books that had been donated by other supporters. These books have now been delivered to 14 schools – nine that we were already working with and four more who were on our waiting list. This incredible donation is already helping to ensure that the children we work with have access to a wider range of books. You can see our Chair, Jo, collecting some of the books in the picture above.

Sewell FM World Book Day collection

Starting in March, one of our long-term supporters, Sewell FM ran a book collection for us at their Sewell on the Go petrol stations and convenience stores and set up a Virgin Money Giving page to encourage monetary donations.

The collection coincided with World Book Day and the response from Sewell customers was fantastic, as you can see from the photograph that shows just some of the donated books.

Looking forward

This period of time, whilst challenging, has given us the opportunity to develop new initiatives, work with new partners and adapt to respond to new and different challenges. But it has meant that we’ve been unable to place volunteers in schools to provide one-to-one support. However, we are looking forward to the new term and, in September we will be supporting even more schools than we did pre-covid, with 18 schools being supported in some way.

We’re hugely excited about this and about the continuation of our reader of the week scheme and our reading challenge, which have both been so well received and have allowed us to encourage and support an even wider group of children.

As always, we’re hugely grateful to our sponsors and supporter who allow us to carry out our work and we look forward to seeing as many of you as we can in person soon.

Joanne Walker
Trust Chairman and Founder

Paula Stead
Trustee and Founder

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