Suite E Gobles Court 7 Market Square Bicester Oxon OX26 6AA Tel: 01869 320380 Email: info@archoxfordshire.org.uk www.archoxfordshire.org.uk

NEWSLETTER Issue 34 April 2019

Welcome to the sunny summer term!

We celebrated the end of last term with a very well attended volunteer meeting, welcoming Georgina Atwell as guest speaker. Georgina gave us an inspiring presentation on the Toppsta book review website and also kindly donated some super books to ARCh. Thank you Georgina! She also showed us the Toppsta Reading Records – schools can sign up to receive these so if your school is interested please refer them to the Toppsta website toppsta.com. At the meeting we also welcomed volunteer Maggie Lloyd to the stage to introduce Bubble & Squeak, the book of duologues she has just had published. Maggie and fellow volunteer June Mack gave us a demonstration of the joy of sharing reading. The book has been illustrated by local artist Ken Marsland who we also welcomed to the meeting and Ken brought along a super display of his art work. Bubble & Squeak is retailing at £5 per copy and Maggie has kindly offered to donate some of the profits of

sales to ARCh. We have of course bought lots of copies for use in ARCh sessions! Ask your Field Worker if you would like to use in your session. If you would like to buy your own copy or know of a possible retail outlet please do contact the ARCh office. Thanks to our volunteer refreshment team and to Sainsburys who donated cakes for our meeting.

Volunteer meeting

Oxfordshire Headteachers Conference

In March, Elaine and Jane attended the final day of Oxfordshire Headteachers Conference alongside other organisations showcasing the work they do in schools. We met many Heads who we work with at present and a few who don’t have ARCh in their schools - yet! There were some inspiring presentations including one from Layla Moran, MP for Oxford West and Abingdon, a former teacher herself, and author and children’s television favourite Floella Benjamin. We were interviewed at the conference and you can listen to the podcast via www.educationonfire.com/nape020/

During the Easter holidays Jane and Elaine welcomed Witney MP Robert Courts to the ARCh of-

fice. A proud parent of a 2 year old who particularly loves books on trains at present, Robert com-

pleted understood the value of sharing happy reading but realises not every child is fortunate

enough to have an adult at home to share books with. He has promised to help us expand our work

particularly in Carterton and Chipping Norton

During the Easter holidays Jane and Elaine welcomed Witney MP Robert Courts to

the ARCh office. A proud parent of a 2 year old who particularly loves books on

trains at present, Robert completed understood the value of sharing happy reading

but realises not every child is fortunate enough to have an adult at home to share

books with. He has promised to help us expand our work particularly in Carterton

and Chipping Norton.

We have recently also met with Michael Waine, Chairman of Oxfordshire County

Council Education Scrutiny Committee, and Rod Walker, Deputy Lieutenant, who also sits of the

board of Witney Educational Foundation which funds our work in Witney. We were pleased to

update Michael and Rod on our work.

South Abingdon is another priority area for us to expand. We have contacted with the Carousel

Children Centre which serves the area and some of our local volunteers have kindly offered their

support there at weekends.

Finance Schools have now been invoiced for the new financial year. For the first time since 2013 we have increased the cost - but only by £10 - to £150 per child per year. This is still only a small percentage of Pupil Premium funding that schools receive for disadvantaged children (£1320 per child).

Pupil Survey A reminder that our annual evaluation survey will go out to schools this term. This is an opportunity for schools to inform us first-hand how the service is benefitting their children. It is always such a joy to receive schools’ responses and to feed these back to volunteers.

Volunteers needed We still need more new volunteers in Oxford, Bicester, Carterton, Banbury, Didcot, Witney and Abingdon particularly. Word of mouth is best recommendation; do you know someone who would like to volunteer? If so, please bring them to coffee mornings to talk, phone us or ask if you can pass on their details. Also please also let us have suggestions of places to advertise – e.g. notice boards and local magazines.

Banbury United Football Club are helping us expand our work in the town by

sponsoring 2 new volunteers each year for 3 years. They have offered other means of

support too and we look forward to working with them.

We were delighted to learn that ARCh is one of 3 charities selected as finalist in the Charity

category of the Cherwell Business Awards. During the Easter holidays, Elaine spoke about this on

Banbury Sound radio. The shortlisting is great news for us as Banbury

is an area we wish to expand and we would like to work with some

businesses in the town. Being a finalist in the awards means ARCh is

also entered into the Oxfordshire Business Awards. We find out

whether we win the Cherwell award on 10th May!

Volunteer Awards

In May, Gill Hawkins

will be awarded

with a Bicester

Good Citizen Award

for the work she

does, not only in

school but also by

helping keep our

games in good order in the office.

Joyce Day and Richard Hunt will both receive

an Oxford City Council Certificate of Honour at

a Ceremony in the Town Hall on Tuesday 7th

May in recognition of their many years

volunteering in Oxford schools.

Well done and congratulations to all!

Funding Thank Yous

Waitrose Wantage & Oxford stores John Lewis Oxford Doris Field Trust Stanton Ballard Charitable Trust Robert & Margaret Moss Trust Feoffees St Michaels Church Oxford BMW Dragon School Oxford Banbury Town Council Bicester Town Council Cala Homes Sanctuary Housing Witney Lions We have also received donations of wonderful books from Give a Book, Usborne, Oxford University Press, St Hughs School and a collection of Barrington Stoke books (useful for helping dyslexic readers) from Siobhan Dowd Trust. Jane Walker, Sales & Marketing Director at Barrington Stokes, is the guest speaker at our next volunteer meeting in July.

End of Term Volunteer Meeting

We are delighted that the Lord Lieutenant of Oxfordshire Tim Stevenson will be joining us at our meeting on Tuesday 16th July to present long service awards. Three of our volunteers each complete a truly amazing 20 years’ volunteering this year so there will be special awards for Christine Williams, Enid Barker and Anne Collieu. We will also be launching our annual report so an afternoon not to be missed!

Oxford Lottery - ARCh has signed up to this new way of raising funds. Tickets cost £1 and can be bought online using the following link https://www.oxfordlottery.org/support/arch 50% of ticket proceeds go to ARCh so please pass this to family, friends and colleagues who may be interested in supporting our work whilst being in with the chance of windfall if they have a lucky ticket!

We were delighted to meet with local author Jenny Burrage who kindly donated profits from sales of her book “Can I Come” to ARCh. Jenny gave us some copies of the book when she visited our office together with illustrator Valerie Dearlove and these were passed to volunteers with request for reviews from children. Thanks to those who have already sent their reviews in;

“Meerkats are cool. This book is cool too. I liked the design, especially the way the drawings look like they are dripping paint. “I really liked the pictures of baby Murdock and when I took the book into class for our ‘Show and Tell’ my friends said they like the story as well.”

Teresa Cremin

Reading for Pleasure: Developing

Readers for Life

Jane attended this inspiring lecture

which was organised by NAPE

(National Association for Primary

Education) at Brookes University, and

given by Professor Teresa Cremin.

Teresa explained the cognitive, social

and emotional benefits of reading and

the value of sharing the books that tap

into individual children’s interests.

Sharing reading lives and “co-reading”

as she termed it, helps to form close

relationships between adult and child.

The Open University website

www.researchrichpedagogies.org/

research/reading-for-pleasure has lots

of information on research and ideas

for reading for pleasure.

Our unique service in Oxfordshire As you know, the service ARCh provides to Oxfordshire primary schools is unique in this county. There are other charities offering a similar service in other parts of the country; for example, Berkshire has ABCtoRead, Dorset has Dorset Reading Partners and other areas of England are covered by Coram Beanstalk (formerly Volunteer Reading Help). We all provide fully vetted, trained and supported volunteers to schools. Some volunteers have come across an organisation called School Readers and asked us about their work. Their offer is entirely different as it is the school’s responsibility to carry out DBS checks, training, support and to provide resources for their volunteers who listen to children read. So, to avoid confusion, please make sure you always wear your ARCh lanyard and badge when you are in school.

Annual Inclusion Conference Field Workers Charlotte and Clare will be attending the Annual Inclusion Conference on 27th June. The theme this year is “Speaking, Listening and Learning”. This will be another chance to inform schools about our service.

Volunteer Fairs

These events are useful for us to attend as a way of

attracting new volunteers. It is always good when we

are joined by some of our current volunteers who

can enthuse about their experience. Thank you to

Ruth Graham, Mary Anderson and Karen Pulford

who came along to the Abingdon Clubs & Societies

Day in March.

Volunteer Voice

• All schools regularly conduct practice lockdown and fire evacuation procedures. Please ensure you know what to do if needed – if necessary ask at your school. • Pauline Carter recommends sitting in on a Phonics session in school. She really enjoyed the session she joined in her school. • Angela Wiggle told us about a book particularly enjoyed by one of her children. “Trick

Eggs and Rubber Chickens” from the Grubtown Tales series of books by Philip Ardagh made such a big impact on one of her boys that when she went to collect him from the classroom he immediately starting laughing, quoting from the book as he had remembered it from their previous session. Angela said “When you find a book that one of the children loves this much it makes such a difference.”

• A volunteer had a chance meeting in school with the mother of one of the children he had supported and shared this with us: “As ARCh reading volunteers, we set out to help struggling readers to improve their literacy skills by discovering the excitement, wonder and joy of books.

Along the way, we often see a marked increase in pupil confidence but I was recently reminded of a less obvious benefit that ARCh’s one-to-one sessions can bring to the lives of our students when I met the mother of one of my former ‘charges’. She greeted me by thanking me effusively for the time I had spent with her son, telling me how much he looked forward to reading with me. Then the smile on her face narrowed as she ended our conversation by quietly adding: “You won’t know this but your support came at a time when his dad was missing from his life : thank you for being there when WE needed help most.” Happily both my reading partner and his mum are in a much better place these days but I don’t think I’ll ever feel quite as proud, privileged or humble as an ARCh volunteer as I did that day. Reading books really can be a life changing experience.”

• Thanks to Helen Walker, who volunteers at Barley Hill Primary School in Thame, for the super article on her experience as an ARCh Reading Helper. The piece was published in the in the Oxford Times and the Bicester Advertiser.

2019 Annual Report We know ARCh makes an enormous impact on the lives of both children and the volunteers who support them and we are looking for more inspiring stories to include in our publicity materials. How has becoming an ARCh reading helper changed your life?

What impact has it made on the children you are worked with?

Do email us with your stories please. We can anonymise them if you wish.