Volunteer Week at VAS and VAR a Zoo and an Art Gallery

Reading Matters work very closely with Voluntary Action Sheffield (VAS) and Voluntary Action Rotherham (VAR), and they both have recently emailled me about about a couple of exciting projects they have organised to celebrate National Volunteers Week (1 - 7 June 2009).

Voluntery Action Sheffield - Diversity in Volunteering, a Photo Exhibition in June at the Circle, 33 Rockingham Lane, Sheffield, S1 4FW

This photographic exhibition celebrates the diversity of people who volunteer in Sheffield, many of whom have overcome real obstacles to do so. The photographs have been taken by students of photography and capture the essence of volunteering, and its impact on volunteers and the people they reach.

The exhibition is open 1 - 26 June 2009, Monday - Friday, 9.00am - 5.00pm.

During National Volunteers Week, the Volunteer Centre team will be available to talk about volunteering and involving diverse volunteers. Please feel free to drop by at the following times:

• Monday 1 - Wednesday 3 June, 2 - 4pm
• Thursday 4 June, 4 - 6 pm
• Friday 5 June, 10 - 12am

Voluntery Action Rotherham- Free Trip to Chester Zoo for Volunteers and Community Organisations

• Do you give your spare time to help others?
• Are you a volunteer or a paid worker for a Community organisation?

If you have answered yes to any of the above, then join VAR Volunteer Centre and CEDR / RCAT on a free trip to Chester Zoo, where you will also get information about Skills for Life and Train to Gain opportunities.

As they put it "stop monkeying around and join us on the 3 June 2009"!

They will be meeting at VAR at 9am prompt, and returning back for 5pm.

This trip is only for adults and limited to 44 places. Places must be booked in advance by the 27 May 2009 through the VAR on 01709 834464.

For more information then contact:
Sam Walker at CEDR, 28 Percy Street, Rotherham. 01709 722834 or e-mail swalker@rotherham.ac.uk

[monkey picture - Leo Avalon]

Booktalk

I have just been reading about Booktalk on the excellent, Write Away blog. It is not something I had heard about before, but is included in the DWSF National Strategies training and is worth exploring.

Booktalk encourages us to encourage children to talk about the books they have read. The intention is to improve their understanding and appreciation of what they have read, and develop their own writing as a result. Exploring this topic means dealing with a fair amount of jargon but there are some simple ideas underpinning the scheme; simply asking questions about what a young person has read, for example:

• Tell me what you thought/felt about...
• Which parts of the book stay in your mind most vividly?
  
• Have you read any other books like this?

Using such methods will help a child think about what they have read, engage with it, develop ideas and hopefully appreciation and enthusiasm. I recommend the Attachments and Resources on the National Strategies page on Booktalk, the page itself is a little impenetrable.

Obama Reads "Where The Wild Things Are"

A while back I blogged about Barack Obama's favourite book "Where The Wild Things Are", well to prove it here he is online the White House Lawn reading the book to bunch of enthralled kids - inevitably he is a brilliant story teller.

Thanks to 100 Scope Notes

Easter Reading

Just back to work after the Easter holidays, which were a great opportunity to catch up with some reading. I am working through a great big stack of unread novels. I am trying to alternate between 'adult' books and 'kids' books, so as well as We Need To Talk About Kevin
and The Tenderness of Wolves, I read Hoot, Piggies and, best of all, Mortal Engines.

I read Philip Reeves Here Lies Arthur a while back, and I think it is one of the best books I have read for sometime, so I was keen to check out his back catalogue and Mortal Engines did not disappoint. With the sad death of JG Ballard one of my idols, we need all the dystopias we can get, so the post-nuclear war world of the Mortal Engines Quartet is a recommended place to spend some time.

You might also be interested in Gone. I read a review in the Guardian, about how it is written as if it were a video game, ie. perfect those reluctant boys. I also recall the trailer for the book, done as if it were a film. Well for the multimedia hat-trick you can read the whole book online for free, you need to be quick - it is only available until 22 April 2009.

Volunteers Meeting 1 April 2009 (no joke)

We had our termly Volunteer Reading Mentor Meeting yesterday (April Fools Day!) at the Quadrant, in a different format to last time we had a single meeting for Sheffield and Rotherham volunteers, which I think worked well.

We watched the Reading Matters video, which many volunteers had not seen, despite it being quite old now, I gave a quick overview of the Inspire Rotherham project and the materials that are resulting, for example some Rotherham United themed Fun Sheets but the star of the show was Rebecca Fisher a long term volunteer at St Bernard's School. Rebecca gave a short but very informative presentation on how she had carefully adapted her reading sessions to meet the very particular needs of her pupil partners. You kind of had to be there, but you can get the gist of hew work from her presentation:
Reading Matters R Fisher Presentation 1 April 20009

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Presentations & Slid reading literacy

One of the key things to arise from Rebecca's presentation and from other Volunteer Reading Mentors is the quality and appropriateness of the Activity Sheets Reading Matters uses. This is food for thought for me, we need to do some work on the hard copies of the sheets we have, in the meantime I would refer you to some of the sheets I have mentioned before on this blog here and here.

Inspire Rotherham Activity

It has been quite a couple of weeks, there has been an awful lot of activity relating to the new Inspire Rotherham Project. We have followed up the training and visit to Maltby Manor school with the Rotherham United players with visits to Maltby Crags and Maltby Redwood schools, there are slideshows below.

In the middle of these visits the Inspire Rotherham project was officially launched, see some pictures online. Reading Matters had stall in All Saints Square on 21st March. It was good to be involved, we weren't selling much, just telling people about Reading Matters and sharing the word sheets we had prepared for the partnership with RUFC. It was also the first time our new range of Read Up trading cards got a public outing, all the RUFC players we trained have a card with a mixture of football and reading skills and a few facts. They were hugely popular, and we gave out pretty much our entire stock.

As well as all this we have been running a number of partnerships as part of the Inspire Rotherham pilot in Maltby:

• A Reading Leaders course with pupils from Maltby Community School
• A Reading Together workshop for parents at Maltby Community School
• Training for practioners, such as Teaching Assistants, from the Maltby area
  
• New volunteer reading mentors have begun at Hilltop Special School
• A Parents workshop in partnership with GROW

RUFC at Maltby Crags Infant School

RUFC at Matby Readwood School

My presentation - volunteers and the social web

I am currently undertaking a course at Voluntary Action Sheffield, a NOCN Level 3 award in Managing Volunteers, as part of this I am giving a presentation about using web services such as this blog to keep in touch with volunteers. Here are my notes from the presentation, with links to other examples and ideas: volunteers and the social web

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Presentations & Slides blogging Volunteering

Offer for Reading Connects schools

If you work for a school that is a member of Reading Connects you can save £150 on Reading Matters Reading Leaders courses for Key Stage 4/5 students.

Students will be provided with the skills, confidence and resources to mentor younger pupils and achieve an accredited qualification, valuable life skills and volunteering experience as part of the process.

If you book a Reading Leaders training programme before March 31st 2009, the cost of the course for a maximum of 15 participants with this discount will be £750. A saving of £150 on the normal cost.

Book your Reading Leaders course by emailing us at info@readingmatters.org.uk or by calling us on 01274 692219 and quoting NLT/RM.

Rotherham United players visit Maltby Manor Primary School

The players from Rotherham United, trained by Reading Matters, visited their first school, Maltby Manor, on Thursday (12/3/09). They read with six pupils each in a series of reading partnerships. The last sessions parents of the pupils sat in as well.

It was a huge success. The pupils were brilliantly excited, not only about meeting the players, but also about their choice of books. The players were excellent too. I think some were a bit nervous, especially when the parents joined them, but they all took it in their stride and really got stuck in. There was a lovely sound of concentrated reading in the school hall, library and corridors as the players and their partners focused on their books.

As one of the first key activities under the Inspire Rotherham banners the visit created quite a buzz. There were all sorts of people there including Paul Douglas (RUFC Chief Operating Officer) , Joyce Thacker (RMBC Strategic Director Children and Young People's Services) and Ruth Adams (Yorkshire Forward). The press were also in attendance and the day was captured nicely by a report on Look North, look out for the Reading Matters worksheets, which I hope to be able to share online soon!

World Book Day £1 Books

On World Book Day last Thursday 5 March, Reading Matters staff were busy training Rotherham United players to be Reading Mentors, but lots of activities were going on elsewhere for people to get involved with and many are still taking place.

I have just been sent a set of the World Book Day £1 Books, they would be perfect for our reading mentors to use with their partners. My favourite is Mr Gum and the Hound of Lamonic Bibber by Andy Stanton it is absolutely hilarious and I will be checking out other Mr Gum books. The Mr Gum website has had an upgrade for world book day and is well worth checking out.