We have been raising the attainment in literacy with the help of our neighbouring P6s!

Every Thursday morning a small group of very capable P6 pupils from St Joseph’s Primary, visit our Rainbow Room and read to our boys and girls.  While this is great fun and enjoyed by all, it is more than just a laugh.

Sharing books in a very small group (just with one or two others) not only helps our children experience the pleasure of reading (setting them up to be life long readers and successful learners); but helps them really see how you can read a book. Our role models discuss the pictures, talk about the plot of the story – making predictions and developing their partner’s understanding. They use different voices for the characters and help their reading partners explore the roles played by the people in the story. They pace the story according to their partner’s needs and level of understanding – stopping at any unfamiliar words to help grow vocabularies (the key to success in later life!)

The best bit is it isn’t just our Rainbow Room children that benefit from this! Our role models do too! The final stage of learning is being able to teach another! So our P6 friends are learning how to read even better, more fluently and with an awareness of their audience.

Sometimes we take the story even further and explore it fully with role play or imaginative small world play. It’s so cool to learn with the big ones!

You can continue to develop this kind of learning quite easily at home! Just reading bedtime stories together makes a world of difference in developing a love for reading and giving your child’s learning a wee boost! So get stuck into some brilliant books!