Sheffield Summer Reading Challenge Volunteer 2011

A few weeks ago we had a celebration event for the Sheffield Volunteers who supported the Summer Reading Challenge in 2011 and their parents. It was a great event. With each of the volunteers presented with a certificate and goodie bag by Dr Sylvia Dunkley, the Lord Mayor of Sheffield.

I have just got this great photo and a wonderful quote from one of the volunteers:

I want to say thanks to you [all] for the ceremony. It was a great and unforgettable experience.

I agree, it was a lovely evening. Everyone was great!

Sheffield Children's Book Award and Off the Shelf Festival 2011

Whilst at the Sheffield Children's Library I picked up a couple of leaflets giving details of the Sheffield Children's Book Award and Off the Shelf Festival 2011. Both look as excellent as ever.


Sheffield Children's Book Award


A nice line-up, although, if I am honest I haven't ready many at all. A few big names; Chris Riddell for Ottoline at Sea, David Walliams for Billionaire Boy, Terry Deary for Put Out the Light and Malorie Blackman for Boys Don't Cry. I'd like to mention a few local authors; Kevin Brooks for iBoy, Caryl Hart for Rhino, What Rhino and Alex T Smith for Egg.


But for me it is hard to look at anything except David Almond for My Name is Mina, a beautiful, beautiful tale, which I wrote about this time last year.


Off the Shelf Festival 2011


Like the book award, the festival has a real mix of interesting stuff;

• Gangs of Sheffield with Andy Messer
• Let’s Celebrate! With Debjani Chatterjee and Brian D’Arcy
• Meet the Author G P Taylor
• Nick Arnold’s Horrible Science Show
• Seeing Stars: Launch of the Sheffield Simon Armitage Soundscape
• Write Away with the WEA
• Crystal Set
• Goat Boy and Other Journeys with Fay Musselwhite, Susannah Gent, Linda Lee Welch, The Only Michael
• How to Create an Animated Show with Curtis Jobling
• Game for Poetry
• Graphic Art Workshop with Nick Hayes (he designed the great festival programme cover)

I also notice a nice project A City Reads, mapping the books that have inspired the people off Sheffield. Pick up a programme and get involved.

ESCAL - Mad Hatters Talk Picnic and Presentation Afternoon

I am a bit late reporting, but 29 June 2011 was Communication Day in Sheffield, part of the National Year of Communication and Sheffield Children's Festival. The highlight was the Mad-Hatters Talk Picnic - Thosands of pupils having fun in the Peace Gardens:

Those are my photos, there is much better coverage at:

• Sheffield Star
• Yorkshire Post
• BBC News

On the same day Reading Matters had a small stand at the Presentation Afternoon for council employees and ESCAL Partners at the Town Hall. It was a really nice event:

Continued Professional Development Opportunity - Supporting Reading Development

one day accredited training course

11 July - Sheffield, Bannerdale Centre

14 July - Huddersfield, Brian Jackson House

An interactive training day for professionals who support children’s literacy:

• Gain an insight into the literacy curriculum
• Understand how children develop reading skills
• Diagnose reading difficulties
• Develop strategies to improve pupils’ reading skills and confidence
• Develop experience and confidence in supporting pupils to become enthusiastic and confident readers
• Analyse reading support practice
• Prepare for NOCN Level 2 accreditation
• Lunch and refreshments provided

Just £195 per person

Please contact 01274 692219 or info@readingmatters.org.uk

Download a poster [pdf] to display on your notice board. 

Sheffield Poetry Festival

At the great World Book Night, I heard local authors from the MA Writing course at Sheffield Hallam University read from a their ‘Matter’ anthology and as a result found that, Fay Musselwhite's poem has been chosen by Simon Armitage for a Sheffield Poetry Prize.

Fay is one of our Reading Mentors. She is also involved in the first Sheffield Poetry Festival. She is collaborating with award winning filmmaker and taxidermist Susannah Gent to present a 30 minute performance piece called Goat Boy and Other Journeys, as part of the Sheffield Poetry Festival on Saturday 2nd April, 3pm at Bank Street Arts.

Sounds incredibly intriguing.

Crystal Peaks Library | World Book Day | Save Our Libraries

An important community event in aid of World Book Day (3 March 2011) is taking place in Crystal Peaks Library to help promote libraries in a bid to 'Save our libraries'.

A full day of events taking place for adults and children, including readings from famous authors and a visit from The Lord Mayor of Sheffield.

Michelin Starred TV Chef and author Tessa Bramley talks about her books and books that have influenced her life.

Award winning play write and novelist Elizabeth Baines, reads from her books and talks about how libraries played a role in her life.

Local author Martyn Johnson reads from his book "What's tha up to, memoirs of an Attercliffe Bobby" and talks about his involvement in the making of the book Black Diamonds.

Local poet Rob Hindle reads from his books and talks.

Local Community theatre group read from children's books and plays.

Workshop on reading to your children.

I am not going to make it, I'll be at the FOOTSEY Expo, but I hope some Reading Matters representatives will be there.

Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes - Guinness World Record attempt

On 1 March 10.30-11.15, across the country people will be coming together to break the record for the largest number of children, parents and carers performing ‘Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes’.

In Sheffield where I live, people are assembling in the Peace Gardens in Sheffield City Centre, part of the ESCAL project.

It is happening nationally as part of this years Chatterbox Challenge.

My daughter, Rose, will be there. Unfortunately I won't be. Instead I'll be meeting Reading Matters new Young Embedded Advisor in partnership with Chantry YMCA in Rotherham. It's a pretty exciting project too, but maybe not quite as much fun as a mass 'Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes'!

Shhh! - National Day of Action for Libraries

What are you doing this Saturday? Why not pop along to your local libary to support Shhh! - National Day of Action for Libraries.

Look at the Guadian's map for an event near you. I'll be at Sheffield Central Library taking out my quaota of 15 books!

Whether you can make it or not you can get involved in all sorts of ways see the CILIP website (Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals).

There is also a super set of images in support of the campaign by Phil Bradley in the style of World War 2 posters.

2010 Book Awards - Sheffield Children's Book Award and YoungMinds

Today (23/11/10), I was at the Sheffield Children's Book Award at the City Hall where the 2010 winners were announced. I am sure there will be an official announcement with all the winners, but here is a hint - Morris the Mankiest Monster by Giles Andeae and Sarah McIntyre did really well.

It was a superb event the City Hall was full of kids shouting and screaming and stamping their feet for books and reading! I have never done so much clapping in one hour.

I was at the Children's Book award with some of the volunteers I had trained as Volunteers for the Summer Reading Challenge. Both project are organised by the Sheffield Library Service, who deserve a lot of credit.

Another award I have been involved in was also announced this week. The 2010 YoungMinds Book Award was won by Siobhan Curham, author of Dear Dylan.

There is a lovely post on Siobhan Curham's own blog about the award. She writes about how she struggled with a lack of confidence, and that 'I love being able to go into schools and tell the least confident of kids, ‘if I can do it then so can you.’ It is quite emotional and the blog post after she won is even more so.

I think our Reading Matters Mentors can also play a big part in boosting the self-esteem of struggling students, the comments on Siobham's blog show what a difference it can make.

Kelham Island Museum Volunteer Reading Mentors Meeting

Today (19/10/10) we had a super meeting for Volunteer Reading Mentors in Sheffield and Rotherham at Kelham Island Museum guests of the Sheffield Industrial Museum Trust .

It was the normal opportunity to meet other Reading Mentors, collect resources and have a cup of tea. But the main attraction was an introduction by Kirsten Timms, Education Officer of Sheffield Industrial Museum Trust about the 'Changing Face of Work in Sheffield' Pods.

The pods are fantastic packages of information, archives, resources and articles from the museum's collection. They wonderfully contrast aspects of work in Sheffield over the last 200 years. They are available for schools to use and explore, especially when combined with visits to the museum.

For our Reading Mentors they introduced a new angle on reading activities (and some old favourites), and perhaps more importantly reminded us of the living history of South Yorkshire's industry, and the passion it can inspire.

The aim of the meeting was to explore the possibility of Reading Matters volunteers accompanying the pods when the go to schools, to help the staff and pupils get the most out of them and support their use with a programme of reading sessions. If you would like to take part in such a scheme, please do get in touch.

Booked Up at Newfield and Crookes in the Library

Last Friday (1/10/10) , I visited my friend Louise at Newfield School. As well as giving me some top tips for future reading (Something Wickedly Weird by Chris Mould, Tanglewreck by Jeanette Winterson and Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror by Chris Priestley amongst others) she also reminded me about the fantastic Booked Up programme.

Booked Up is organised by the Book Trust and delivered through schools. It allows Year 7 pupils to choose a free book from a specially selected list. The whole project is mainly promoted by school librarians like Louise, but the website is well worth a look. The list of books is always great, their are some nice pages and ideas for parents and carers and interactive tools, games and competitions for participating young people.

After my Newfield visit I was off to Sheffield Town Hall for a little celebration event for the young volunteers I had trained as part of the Summer Reading Challenge. I'll give a bit more info and some images when I get them through. Safe-to-say it was a splendid evening the volunteers were all quietly brilliant and I met the Lord Mayor too. The volunteers all got free tickets to The Crookes gig that was happening in the Library that evening. I heard the band on 6Music the next day - a very literary bunch they sounded too. I didn't go to the gig, but I did get a flyer!


Gigs in libraries - I love it!

Summer Reading Challenge Sheffield Volunteers

This week I trained 20 young people from Sheffield, who have volunteered to help young visitors to Sheffield libraries take part in the Summer Reading Challenge. It is such a great project to be involved with.

This years theme is Space Hop, and the libraries are full of spacey resources, and there are plenty of activities to take part in.

The enthusiastic bunch of volunteers I trained were mainly recruited from schools (Meadowhead, Tapton, Birley and Fir Vale were particularly well represented). They are going to be helping out at the Sheffield Central Children's , Woodseats and Broomhill libraries. So naturally these are the best places to visit, but the Summer Reading Challenge is a national programme, so why not head down to your local library and get involved.


I have just spotted a great article that shows the benefit of summer reading like this, the Kids Lit Blog reports on an American study that has proven that summer reading has a very positive impact for children who participate.

A few football reading resources

I have been going on about football a lot recently, my last review was a football story. But the World Cup means (almost) everyone is hooked on the sport.

At both the Inspired for Life event in Rotherham and a celebration event at Sheffield Town Hall for Volunteer Reading Mentors last Friday, I talked to people about engaging reluctant readers. We found football was often a great 'hook' . I thought I would list a few of the resources I have found that can work really well:

• Football based stories, such as The Dirty Dozen I reviewed recently
• Football Games such as these England Football Stars Top Trumps Specials or this BrainBox Football Quiz
• Comic style stories such as My Brother's a Keeper or Moving the Goalposts
• A football based play, such as Not Just a Game or Selling Out
• Some non-fiction such as Great World Cup Moments or Wicked World Cup 2010
• Poems; I Love You, Football or Fantastic Football Poems
• Biographies, the Name Your Link are great and include Wayne Rooney and Hope Powell
• Learn some new skills with Soccer Skills (Usborne Activity Cards) or Football Skills
• Football Things to Make and Do or the official 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa Activity Book

Launch of Sheffield's Year of Communication - part of the ESCAL project

Yesterday (29/4/10) I was at the launch of Sheffield's Year of Communication. Sheffield is eight months ahead of a national year of communication which will run in 2011.

Sheffield's Year of Communication is part of the ESCAL project (Every Sheffield Child Articulate and Literate by the age of 11). Reading Matters is fully engaged with ESCAL, supporting volunteer reading mentoring in schools and organising family literacy training and support programmes.

There were some very engaging speakers and workshops at the launch. I particularly enjoyed Mick Waters, president of the Curriculum Foundation. He encouraged everyone to have realistic conversations with children and young people; not adopting that classic sing-song voice when speaking to young children, or telling a pupil to do something then two minutes later asking "so, what are you doing?". He spoke about Talk Partners in the classroom, but the message is the same for Reading Matters one-to-one reading sessions; conversations are so much more powerful when the "[young people] know that their partner does not know". Young people love to tell you facts and opinions when you show you are genuinely interested.

Mick ended they day with a video, that could have been one of Reading Matters reading sessions, with an adult and a pupil reading together. By the end of the clip a host of children who started out off-camera were crowding round the two readers to get involved. As Mick said, it was the adult giving her time, attention and dedication to the children that made all the difference.

Care2Read - Sheffield Foster Carers

Yesterday I attended the last day of a Reading Matters Care2Read training course for Sheffield Foster Carers. It is the first time we have run the course with the Sheffield Fostering Service, and it was just great.

The eye-opener for me was the numbers of children the foster carers look after and the range of ages. Of the 12 carers I met, on average they look after nearly four children each, with ages from 9 months up to 16 and older.

I have one 18 month old daughter who is quite enough of a handful, and clearly dealing with foster children can will be even more complicated.

As well as looking after the children, the foster cares have a big package of training and development to handle too. I hope Reading Matters can play a part in this in the future, obviously without adding to workloads.

The foster carers on the course were full of ideas and inspiration. They will get an accreditation from the course, but I think the main outcome was some reassurance that they are already doing so much to help the children with their reading and confidence. Building activities into your daily routine in an informal way (reading road-signs, recipes, shopping lists or whatever) is just as much benefit as a big structured 'educational plan'.

Another Care2Read training course for Sheffield Foster Carers starts today I hope this will go as well as the first.

Opportunities for Sheffield Volunteer Reading Mentors

A quick post for volunteer reading mentors in Sheffield, or for that matter any volunteers in Sheffield.
I have had a little bit of involvement with the Sheffield Volunteering Strategy (here is a picture to prove it) it is an excellent and realistic project. The team involved are looking for Volunteering Ambassadors to sing the praises of being a volunteer in Sheffield.

Another event that you might like to get involved with; next Tuesday 30 March 2010, Voluntary Action Sheffield (VAS) are hosting a Meet the Candidates - Election Question Time. Nicola Bates for the Conservatives in Sheffield Hallam, and Paul Blomfield for Labour in Sheffield Central will be meeting local volunteers after the event to find out more about what Sheffield volunteers do to help local people and why their work is important.

If you are volunteer in Sheffield why not head along and speak to Nicola and Paul, see Clare Walsh's post for more information.

A week and a day

So Thursday was World Book Day and, perhaps as a result, my week has been incredibly busy with all manner of reading based activity:

• I have been back to Sheffield University where I was a student, training current students to be reading mentors in Sheffield primary schools. They will be helping children be Book Busters; an ESCAL (Every Sheffield Child Articulate and Literate) project in conjunction with Sheffield School Library Service.
• Our new Care2Read course begun last week with a group of foster parents at the fostering service. I am always so amazed by foster carers; taking on children of different ages and backgrounds and with such different needs, often as well as their own children. They are so dedicated to the children they care for they're going to make perfect reading partners. They are also able to inspire new reading partnerships; I heard about older children reading with the younger ones. Great stuff.
• On Monday 1 March we had our regular termly meeting for reading mentors. I always enjoy catching up with people who I do not see enough of. And this time we had a great presentation from Barrie from Barrington Stoke. He completely re-affirmed my love for their range of books. He showed us how everything is so carefully prepared; the covers, the font used, the editing process with young people, paper quality and all other aspects of the publishing system. It results in a perfect range of books. Check out one of their newest ranges, the Five Lords of Pain.
  
• On the day of World Book Day, Thursday 4 March, I was training a group of primary school staff to run their own Reading Matters volunteer reading mentors project in school. It is a nice session and I always get lots of new ideas.
• World Book Day itself has some great activities as usual, for example games and resources on their website. I was in my favourite book shop, Scarthin Books, at the weekend, they had a nice display of the current batch of £1 World Book Day books.
• Finally, I am preparing for a set of training courses this week and next. Getting a bunch of new mentors up-to-speed, and a bit of a refresher for longer-term mentors next week.

It is so good to be involved with all these fantastic activities, all Reading Matters mentors and trainees are always so enthusiastic and full of ideas and inspiration for getting children reading.

Competition Time

I have spotted a few competitions to try:

Bounce into Books

We have just missed the week long Bounce into Books festival (in particular I missed Tommy Donbavand at my local library), but there is still time to enter their competition. They are looking for the most peculiar facts about your neighbourhood to be included in a new book Yorkshire: A Very Peculiar History. Sounds like fun, closing date is 28 March 2010.

Harriet Goodwin

Next, do you like the idea of appearing as a character in a book, well author Harriet Goodwin is offering the chance to be in her next book, The Extraordinary Legacy of Elvira Phoenix. A great opportunity, closing date is 31 March 2010

Sheffield Libraries Readers Card

Finally, and this is more for older readers, Sheffield Libraries' new reader’s card scheme lets you get free coffee, but also the opportunity to win prizes. It is a pilot scheme running up until 18 April 2010, which I presume is the closing date.

Reading Leader's Celebration | Sheffield, December 16 2009

As promised in my previous post about the great results of our Character Profile activity, here are some photos from our celebration event which took place on 16 December at Sheffield Town Hall.

As well as the fabulous author Alan Gibbons, Councillor Andrew Sangar, people from Barrington Stoke, Reading Matters employees and Sheffield Council personnel, the most important people in attendance where the staff and Reading Leaders from Sheffield schools:

• Handsworth Grange School
• Heritage Park Community School
• King Ecgbert School
• Silverdale School
• Stocksbridge High School

It sounds like Alan Gibbons has had a busy month, that is set to continue. He is writing a new Barrington Stoke book, The Dying Photo, based on a blurb written by James Pybis of Our Lady's and St Philomena's Primary School in Liverpool, as part of The Book Factor project. I first read about this on the Write Away website, so thanks to them.

Character Profiles - One-to-one Reading Partnerships in Sheffield Schools

At the end of last term (16 December 2009) we held a celebration event for all the Reading Leaders we have trained in Sheffield schools this year. It was a fantastic event with author Alan Gibbons giving an inspired presentation, more like a comedy routine than a writer talking about his work. I'll give some more details when I get the photos through. In the meantime I wanted to share another activity we undertook with all the reading mentors we supported last year, over 200 of them!

All of the Sheffield mentors and their partners had the opportunity to complete a character profile about someone they read about together, and we have compiled the results into a book that you can read and download online: