Success Stories

Reading YOT

MS was unable to read two letter words and rarely attended school. Now he reads books for pleasure and attends every day.

MS is in year 8 and at the start of his Communicate intervention, his attendance and behaviour at school were both very poor. His mother was involved with an Education Welfare Officer and faced fines for non-attendance.

To his credit, MS has always engaged really well in his sessions despite having a very negative perception of school and education. MS’s communication skills were very weak which is why he kept misbehaving in school. The diagnostic highlighted just how weak his communication skills were. The Communicate tutor had to go right back to the beginning teaching him to read, recognise and spell two-letter words.

His progress was initially slow. He had to learn the process of learning words as well as committing them to memory. However, using a few memory tricks and a good dose of humour, the tutor was able to teach him what he needed to know in a way that he enjoyed and responded well to.

He has now completed the basic words module which teaches the 300 most commonly used words. He has developed ways to work out the words for himself and has worked on his handwriting which is now clear, legible and fast. He is reading books with the tutor for pleasure and he is now mainly working on his sentence writing to write funny stories. His sentence structure, spelling and vocabulary have improved dramatically. He has recorded one of these stories and created a video using Lego for the visual.

The impact of his sessions is demonstrated by his attendance at school. His school attendance jumped from 30% to 100%. He is getting good reports from all of his teachers and his Mum is ecstatic with his progress. She puts his change in attitude and confidence almost entirely down to his sessions with the Communicate Tutor. MS has himself said he really likes the sessions and has learnt a lot. He has since started doing the intervention on a voluntary basis. There can be no better endorsement than that.

Princes Risborough School

We now have a student who writes confidently, fluently and more importantly, legibly thanks to 3 hours of intervention.

We started working with a year 8 student who generally lacks confidence in class. One issue was that he struggled to keep up because of this handwriting. He used to print rather than join his writing which he found quicker but this limits how fast you can write and can cause the hand to hurt. The student was very willing and wanted help to improve his handwriting but equally saw the intervention as a bit of a stigma so we needed to handle the process carefully.

We worked together 1:1 for 6 weeks for 30 minutes a week. We prioritised the accuracy of his letter formation, joining and keeping the letters on the line. We identified 7 letters he has particular problems with.

The student was attentive and careful when learning the correct way to form his letters but got very frustrated when he made a mistake which showed he really cared about getting it right. Lots of praise and reassurance worked wonders but most powerful was being able to show him his initial sample. He could see for himself the progress he was making. No one had to tell him. 

He worked really hard, repeatedly rewriting texts until he could do it beautifully. Gradually, he started to form letters easily and this naturally led onto joining. At this point, his pride in his writing started to grow and he was happy for his work to be shown as an example to other students.  More importantly, looking at his class books, his new skills were being transferred into his lessons.

Although initially, his writing was slower, teachers gave him the time to get it right and now his writing is fluent and fast. He now writes confidently and more importantly, legibly. He can now continue to improve his control and work hard towards developing an important exam and life skill.

SOVA

Mr F’s ability and confidence has improved dramatically. Last week, he called me to make another appointment- something he would not have had the confidence to do just a couple of months ago.

We were able to make a huge difference to a participant’s confidence speaking in English as part of our Sova Achieving Change through Employment (ACE) project.

The project is designed to help black, minority ethnic and migrant individuals find work. Mr F is an Eritrean man, whose first language is Tigrinya. He moved to the UK around 10 years ago. He understands most of what is being said to him but when I started working with him, he was not a confident reader and was extremely difficult to understand.

Mr F was keen to improve his language skills to enhance his employment prospects. Before the course, he would struggle at interviews and would need a lot of help searching for appropriate jobs and filling out application forms. He was very reluctant to make or receive calls.

We started with the ‘Basic Words’ section – a particularly useful element of the course. By learning the most used 300 words properly, it was amazing how much everyday language Mr F was able to use. The section highlighted certain words that he had been pronouncing incorrectly since moving to the UK and correcting these mistakes instantly made his speaking much clearer.

Mr F particularly enjoyed seeing his scores improve. It gave him a real sense of achievement. He has also been able to attend an IT course where he understood the instructor and was able to follow instructions. Not only has Communicate sessions increased his employability, it has also allowed him to pursue other courses and opportunities which will improve his prospects even more. He is now much more able to fill in application forms independently and will be much more confident attending interviews on his journey to find work.

Positive Steps

L wanted to improve her communication and reading skills to enable her to improve her job prospects.