Volunteer Reading Champions - volunteering

Getting in contact with a school

If you are an individual that wants to become a Reading Champion by doing work with young people and reading, or a business wanting to increase your corporate social responsibility, you may find the following information useful.

Please be aware that you (or your staff) are likely to need a Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) check before going into school, and you will definitely need one if you are to have any unsupervised contact with pupils. As a volunteer you should discuss this with the school when you get in contact.

• There could be a volunteering network already in place in your local authority. To find out whether this is the case, contact the childrens' services department of your local council.
• Get in touch with a local school directly and explain that you want to volunteer to help children to read. When contacting a primary school ask for the literacy coordinator as this will be the best person to speak to.
• Volunteer Reading Help (VRH) have branches across the country. To find out more about VRH visit www.vrh.org.uk
• Reading Matters places reading volunteers in secondary schools in Yorkshire. For more information visit www.readingmatters.org.uk
• Do It is an online database of volunteering opportunities. There may be opportunities to volunteer in schools in your local area through Do It. Visit www.do-it.org.uk

Before visiting a school

A school visit is arranged between you and the school. A visit to a school will usually last about 30 minutes to an hour.

Before visiting you should have established the following with a member of staff at the school:

• Which teacher or member of staff you are coming to visit
• What time to arrive
• How long the visit will last
• How many children you will be talking to
• How old the children will be
• If anything in particular will be expected of you
• What the school envisages will take place

It is a good idea to contact the school one or two days prior to your visit to reconfirm these details.

Visiting a school

Every school visit will be different and how the visit is run will depend on the member of staff in charge and the age of the pupils. However, it might help to prepare what you are going to say based around these points:

• Introduce yourself and explain why you are there
• Talk about why you like reading
• What was it that got you into reading?
• Talk about your favourite book or author
• Talk about your favourite book as a child
• Ask the children about the books that they like to read
• If you work, talk about the job you do and why reading is important in order to do it. (If you are retired you could talk about why reading was important in the job that you used to do.)
• Read a section from a favourite story or poem. This doesn’t have to be something that you read recently but it needs to be a book appropriate to children.
• It is good to take something that the children can pass around. Try to bring relevant props or pictures. If you have anything associated with what you are talking that can be handled by the class, this is ideal.
• Be aware that you may be asked unexpected or inappropriate questions (e.g. how old are you? much do you earn?) Just remember that you are the focal point of the session but you are not expected to answer everything. Kids will often ask questions in the hope that you’ll give an answer but they don’t always expect one!
• You are not expected to run the session. There should be a teacher who you can turn to on hand at all times to oversee what is going on.