Practical ideas

Practical idea - Role models in the community

17 Feb 2011

Involving members of the community and having real role models in school can be extremely powerful. Ensure that you involve your pupils in the process of getting people into school. Find out who they look up to, then ask the pupils to write and invite the chosen person into school and arrange the visit.

Here are a few ideas for the kind of people you might like to approach:

• Authors, storytellers, poets and illustrators
• The services: Army, navy, airforce, paramedics and police. Ask them to talk about their jobs, their favourite reads and how reading has helped them in their jobs.
• The local newspaper: Link up with your local newspaper and invite the journalists into school.
• Musicians and lyricists: invite local musicians and songwriters into school to run workshops on lyrics and rhymes. Rap has been a very successful hook in some schools.
• Volunteering: if you are interested in getting adults from the community to come and volunteer to support children’s reading, contact Volunteer Reading Help who may be able to help you find suitable volunteers. Visit http://www.vrh.org.uk/ for more information.
• Local businesses: Ask local businesses to sponsor an event or reading club. These businesses may be interested in donating money for books, prizes for clubs or go one step further and get their members of staff involved.

Tags: Community and Business involvement, Key stage 1, Key stage 2, Key stage 3, Key stage 4, Reading, Role models and peer mentoring, Schools & teaching, Teaching ideas

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