National Year of Reading - Coram Beanstalk

For the National Year of Reading, we are sharing a series of short conversations with people who are involved in promoting reading with young people. This could be a programme, resources or a literary event, and we're giving them the opportunity to share what they do and how you can get involved.

In this episode we are joined by Amy Lewis, Head of Coram Beanstalk.

Coram Beanstalk work with primary, secondary and virtual schools to enable children to grow a love for reading. They provide one-to-one in person reading support, giving children the help and encouragement they need to find books that inspire and delight, setting children on a path to become readers for life.

Transcript

Katy 0:12

H i, I'm Katy.

Ali 0:13

I'm Ali

Katy 0:14

and welcome to Mostly Book Talk. This episode is part of our series of short episodes about charities and what they're doing in the National Year of Reading.

Ali 0:22

And in this episode, we're pleased to welcome Amy Lewis, head of Coram Beanstalk. We' re delighted to have Amy Lewis, who is head of Coram Beanstalk, to talk to us today. So, Amy, tell us about what Coram Beanstalk is.

Amy 0:40

Yeah, so Coram Beanstalk is focused on one-to-one, in person, reading for pleasure, using real books. We're working across all educational phases from early years right through to secondary. In the early years, we deliver sessions that help parents really enjoy reading with their children. In primary school, we're recruiting volunteers from the local community and we're training vetting, supporting them to become reading helpers. And at secondary level, we feel that the older students are best placed to do that. So we train older students within a secondary school to become reading mentors for younger children in year seven and year eight. .

Ali 1:24

And what are you doing specifically in the national year of reading?

Amy 1:28

Yeah, so it's an interesting one, isn't it? The year of reading is great from our perspective in terms of it raising the profile of reading, bringing attention to some of the issues out there, the reasons why children and young people aren't getting engaged with reading at the moment. But in terms of what we're doing, I'm gonna say we're not doing anything massively different. You know, I I started the year thinking we really should get some plans going here, we should get some things happening, and then actually felt that the most useful thing I could do is hold the ship steady, keep doing what we are doing, make sure we're talking to lots of different people. And I think Year of Reading has been brilliant for connecting all of the people that are working within this space. But our plan for the year of reading is to exist beyond the year of reading.

Katy 2:19

Fair enough. And how do you get your volunteers?

Amy 2:24

Yeah, so our volunteers can come from anywhere, really. I mean, how do we get them? Is where do you find them? Yeah. I mean, if you go and search up reading in primary school, then Coram Beanstalk's probably going to pop up. But the most successful source of our reading volunteer applications is generally word of mouth, and that's the same for our schools. If people have been a reading helper with us, they love it, they can't shut up about it. It's a brilliant experience for people to get involved with. If you work in a school and you have our reading helpers active, you realise what a joy they are to have in place that it stops the guilt that you wish you could do more for some of the children in your class, but you just haven't got the time to do it, and they'll do it. So loads of volunteers coming through from word of mouth, and we've been really lucky that we've been part of the Get Written Reading campaign with the Sunday Times, which has brought an absolute huge volume of applications to our door, which we've both engaged within our primary programme, but also if we're not able to use them to think about where else they may be able to help across the literacy space.

Ali 3:31

No, that's good. So that's been a really useful collaboration with other charities who are looking for volunteers as well.

Amy 3:38

Yeah, it absolutely has. And I think sitting as a charity leader, I'm having a lot of conversations with different people that may be my team that are engaging with volunteers, it may be journalists that are helping us seek volunteers, but also schools. And just last week I was chatting to a school and they were looking for different initiatives to engage with that they could help children to become readers. Now, Coram Bean stalk can help with that to an extent. We'll go into school, we'll probably help sort of six to eight children across the year, but there's lots of other children that need that help. So through that, we're able to mention other charities and organizations that are perhaps smaller. I'm thinking book clubs in schools was the one that came up on Friday when I was chatting. But being able to mention what's out there that can support children. And I think if we can have one thing that comes out of year of reading, it's that trust across the sector to know that we can share, we can collaborate, we can signpost because ultimately we all want children to read more. The more we can act as a collective virtual village around the children, the better you know their outcomes are gonna be.

Katy 4:53

How do schools find you and how do they navigate that landscape? There's so many things they could be doing.

Amy 4:58

There is, and gone are the days where you could set up an email campaign and think you're gonna get new schools off the back of it. Ain't gonna happen. We're living in a hugely digital world right now, and that has got a lot of benefits in terms of getting out there, getting messages out there. I'm talking to you guys, and I've not had to trek down to London to see you. There's a benefit, but also the absolute deluge of stuff that's coming at all of us, particularly at schools, means that if somebody doesn't already know of you, you're really unlikely to get through the door. So we know that word of mouth recommendation is going to be the most successful way of engaging with new schools. We need a head teacher, a literacy lead, a class teacher to say, Oh, we've got Coram Beanstalk volunteers in. Have you heard about them? And that will translate to coming through as a school inquiry for us. There's not many things coming through where somebody's just searched us up.

Katy 5:56

Yeah. You've chosen to not go digital, you've got volunteers face to face in schools. What is it that you feel is unique about that that brings to that reading experience for those you either have volunteers going in, either supporting parents or supporting children in primary, or you've got the older children in the second. That face-to-face, what is it about that that you feel is key in terms of the way in which you approach reading for pleasure?

Amy 6:25

There's obviously organizations that do digital reading. So there's one thing. I took over as head of Coram Beanstalk in 2021, worked with the charity since 2011. So had a really good, solid understanding of where we were at that time, what was emerging around us. And actually, one of the things that I sort of feel really strongly as a charity leader is you need to be very clear with what you do do, but also with what you don't do. So that is why we stuck with the one-to-one in person, reading for pleasure, real books. And when you've got those, there's actually a lot of things you can do around that. But as to why I've stuck with that, I think partly from I'm a mum, my boys are 18 and 22 now. They're big, they're big things. What I know, having been a mum, having other children still around me of various ages, is there is nothing a child wants more than an adult to give them 100% of their attention. There is nothing will compete with that, no matter what the device is, what the telly program is, what's on offer. They adore it when an adult follows their lead and comes int o that space with them. That hasn't changed, you know, despite the digital stuff, that human connection is at the very center of our human experience. And I don't want to take us away from that. There's just something amazing about connecting with the child and saying, I'm here for you in this moment, nothing else matters. And not only that, no one's even paying me to do it because I'm doing it as a volunteer. And that for children is an experience that they may not get anywhere else. They're really unlikely to get it in school. A lot of other interventions are group interventions or it's class stuff, or you know, the teacher may talk to them on a one-to-one basis, but there's other stuff happening around them. In homes, they can be busy, there can be siblings competing for tension, parents on shift patterns, all sorts of stuff going on, all sorts of distractions. And actually, the time we give totally focuses on that child. So sorry, that was a bit of a soapbox moment. And I certainly wouldn't take away the other ways you can work with children. There's huge value in the digital connection for one, can reach children that we just can't reach because we haven't got volunteers on the ground there. Group things, hugely social for children, can be a great experience for them. But as a mum internally, I know that children just want to be seen and heard.

Katy 9:17

You also stressed that you use real books. Yeah. How do you choose them and what works well?

Amy 9:22

I don't get involved really with doing that because it ain't my area of expertise. I'd have all the books that mention poo or fart, I think. That's in my experience what my boys would have loved, you know, and that's a good thing. And to be fair, you can't go too long with poo and fart because you're primary school children. It certainly gets them interested. It gets them picking it up, and the image that loads of children spot on OI frog is sorry, oi dog, oi dogs, I forget which or I'm on about, is the dog doing a poo. It's not mentioned, there's no words about it, but it's there as a picture, and how naughty is that that we've got a dog doing a poo. So the way that the Beanstalk books are chosen, it's part of my team's responsibility to do that. We obviously take into account the experiences of our volunteers, what the children are liking. We keep an eye on what's out there, look at what's coming through new. We are picking books which we think are going to be pretty irresistible to children. So our starter pack of books is 20 books, quite a lot of variety in there. There's poetry books in there. I want to say there's a joke book in there, but we always struggle with that. And I've suggested this year we have a tongue twister book instead, because I think that'll have the same outcome. Tongue twisters or riddles, that sort of thing. And then wordless books, loads of picture books, loads of dip in and dip out books. Because what we want to do is put books on the table that feel like fun, they feel like something that you want to pick up, you just want to flick through it, but also books that we're going to start to find out more about the children. You go and talk to any boy and say to them, What do you like? They'll say like football. When you get to know them, that might not be the thing that they most like. It's just the answer they think they should be given. So books that really allow us to uncover what interests and motivate children. Because once we can uncover, we're getting very year of reading, go all in, focus here.

Katy 11:13

Yeah.

Amy 11:13

Once you know what children's interests are or what they're showing a flicker of interest in, you can start to take them on a reading journey that really connects to them.

Katy 11:23

And then if your volunteers find that topic that they really like, they can then presumably within the school and the library find other books that go down that track.

Amy 11:32

Yeah, and that's exactly what we want. We'll often get volunteers saying, Oh, you haven't given me a book that does X, Y, Z, and I need a book that does this. We get that, but how can we possibly provide a pack of books that will have the book for every child? All we can do is give you a starter point and then go chase it. And they do, they really do chase the books down, leaning heavily on public libraries, school libraries that are getting better, and that's one of the big initiatives through year of reading the libraries for primary schemes getting extended. So yeah, finding the book will be out there.

Ali 12:06

Something out there that sparks their interest, and then you can go on that journey with them. And they can choose, can't they? There's books in the school library, they can go and have a look at all the books about dinosaurs or exactly shops.

Amy 12:20

It's a nice thing too, and you know, going back to that why one-to-one, if you want-to-one with a child, actually, you can share any book with them, you know, that you've got someone there who you know, child can have a go at reading if they're struggling with it, they're struggling with the decoding there. Reading help will do the reading. They don't know what a word is, they'll tell them what the word is. It's so tailored to the point where that child is at. And we don't work in any structured or progressive way because the children we work with sometimes they can be quite vulnerable. They can have had a weekend, they've perhaps had a contact session over the weekend, and it is knocked them for six. And actually, they just want a really soft, comforting book on that day. Other days they're bouncing off the walls, and actually, a book where we can start bringing some actions in can be really good fun. But you can judge that, and we say to our volunteers, get to know the child in front of you on that day, in that moment, because they're unique.

Katy 13:17

You talked about how volunteers can get involved, and there's lots of ways in which they can find you. What about schools? So you say most schools sign up by word of mouth, but just in case anyone's listening to this thinking we would really like to have quorum in our school, as simple as just go to your website.

Amy 13:33

Yeah, it really is, and click on the button that says schools, so it feels like it triggers something really fancy. It actually triggers an email in my inbox, and then I'll write an email back saying let's have a chat. There's no obligation for schools to get involved. Sometimes just that conversation can be actually being stuck isn't the best fit for us at this time. But if I've introduced them to something that is a brilliant fit for them, then that's positive. It's helping.

Ali 13:56

It's been a useful exercise. So, as it is the national year of reading, what are your hopes for it?

Amy 14:03

I think what we've got to understand is that we ain't going to crack the challenges that have been flagged through the national year of reading in a year. And we'll all scramble over each other and knock each other out in the process of trying to do that, and the children will be left behind. So let's look at the year of reading as a start point to build connection, to build relationships, to build community, to build collaboration, to build a shared purpose, and then let's still drop our egos and get out there and deliver on it. And it's going to take time and it's going to take shifts. But what I do know through the work I've done with Beanstalk the Literacy Link, the people are out there to make this happen. We just need to unlock it and free it and bring everybody forward with us. That's brilliant. Thank you very much.

Katy 14:53

Thank you.