Encouraging vocational students to improve their literacy through a tailored Drop Everything and Read (DEAR) programme.
This project set out to explore ways of encouraging reading for pleasure, with the ultimate aim of improving the students’ reading skills, overall literacy and cultural capital.
The project team worked with three vocational tutor groups, each with 12-15 students, including one Painting and Decorating, one Plastering and one Carpentry and Joinery. These three groups took part in the ‘Drop Everything and Read’ (DEAR) initiative once a week during tutorials. Bespoke reading was created alongside this activity, creating spaces, activities, and opportunities to promote and encourage reading within the college, many of which were piloted on World Book Day, and then written into extra-curricular provision, with the support of Leeds College of Building Student Union.
OTLA 8
4. Be creative and innovative in selecting and adapting strategies to help learners to learn - Having had responsibility for whole school literacy whilst teaching in secondary, one of the comparative strengths of the OTLA 8 project was the creative freedom it offered. The project lead was very aware that LCB students have all graduated through intensive primary and secondary literacy strategies, so what needed to be offered at college had to look and feel very different to what they experienced at school. LCB learners often have lower levels of literacy, but by their very nature are practical, tactile and creative. Through mediums such as visual arts, comic books, practical construction and design and role-playing games that key into their cultural sphere of reference, the team were able to initiate conversations about reading which otherwise may have seemed irrelevant or off-putting.
5. Value and promote social and cultural diversity, equality of opportunity and inclusion - This project was as much about cultural capital and inclusion as it was about the promotion of reading – these spheres are so interlinked and inter-dependent it’s virtually impossible to discuss them in isolation. In a college community which is predominantly white, working class and male, it was important to open up the frame of reference and make unexpected partnerships. The work LCB are doing with Leeds Arts University is a good example of this, enabling students to work alongside undergraduates and gain an insight into different lifestyles and world views. The WBD activities enabled students to take part in role-playing games and arts activities. These will be taken forward now by the Student Union as an addition to their traditionally sports-heavy extra-curricular offer. The project team are also in discussion about offering activities linked to gaming and review writing – again embedding literacy within the fabric of the college in a way which also challenges stereotypes of ‘what our students are interested in’.
20. Contribute to organisational development and quality improvement through collaboration with others - One of the key successes of the OTLA8 project has been the enthusiasm with which staff across the college have got onboard with various strands of the initiative. The more links made with vocational staff, the wider the project reached. For example, the non-English/ILS staff who were trained as Reading Mentors were instrumental in getting staff involved with WBD and putting the project lead in touch with tutors to help with the construction of the Little Libraries. Many staff also contributed books to the general book collection appeal and also to Christmas Book Appeal.