Education for Social Justice

5 September 2022

The Rhythm for Reading programme is deeply rooted in education for social justice. My personal mission is driven by my commitment to the development of inclusion in society, and built on the principle of equity in education.

I have worked in leading independent schools such as Alleyn’s, teaching the children from some of the country’s most privileged families, and yet I believe in empowering all children. I am writing this to share with you the mechanism that we can use together to raise standards in reading. Together, we can raise standards in reading and the Rhythm for Reading programme offers a mechanism to achieve this.

By empowering children with a lifelong love of reading, we can protect their mental health. An additional benefit of the Rhythm for Reading programme is that it launches the children into the world of musical notation, which they learn to read fluently, right from the start of the ten week intervention programme.

This is what we aim to do in Rhythm for Reading:

• to raise standards in reading.
• to empower staff to sustain those raised standards.
• to train staff, especially the support staff who are helping readers to develop fluency and enjoyment in their reading.

At Rhythm for Reading, we recognise that phonological processing requires:

• phonological knowledge (letter-sound correspondence),
• phonological awareness (sensitivity to the smallest sounds of language)
• awareness of the flow of sounds (rhythmic and grammatical context).

The data gathered from the past 10 years show that the Rhythm for Reading programme improves perceptual sensitivity:

• to the sounds of language,
• to the rhythmic flow of language,
• to the grammatical structure and consequently, the comprehension of language.

Children have reported many changes in their learning behaviour at the end of the ten weeks of the Rhythm for Reading programme, including:

• being able to follow their teacher’s instructions,
• knowing what is going on in the lesson,
• being able to get on with their work because they are able to ignore distractions.

If you would like to find out more, visit the contact page to get in touch and sign up for weekly insights.

Tags: comprehension , sounds of language , Grammatical structure , raise standards in reading , empower , mental health , read fluently

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