Intensive Reading Programme

An IRP success story

The Intensive Reading Programme (IRP) is part of the PLUS strategy. It is aimed at young people between 10 and 18 years old who, primarily, have a reading age below their actual age or who have not fully developed an interest or enjoyment of reading.

The main aims are to improve a young person's participation in reading by giving them the ability to read critically and fluently.

Generally there are two strings to the programme's bow:
1) The Reading Challenge - focusing on engagement and overall improvement of reading skills
2) Toe by Toe - focusing on turning improvement in reading skills into enjoyment of reading.

The Basic Skills Tutors, Support Artists and several of the Lead Artists took part in IRP training. This included ways to increase a Learner's confidence, identify routes for progression in participation and skill, one-on-one and group work, targeting an individual's interests, using reading diaries and conducting reading interviews and Learner profiles.

For the PLUS programme the IRP was used in two main ways. The first was one-on-one reading practise using a selection of books provided as part of the IRP package. Learners read aloud for 30 minutes at some point during the day and could work toward WHSmith tokens. The second was staff members conducting reading interviews (on laptop PCs) and helping Learners to fill out reading diaries.

The IRP worked well and some of the young people made and completed ILPs (Independent Learning Programmes) around it. The initial preference was to have one-on-one reading as a time-out alternative for young people who were disrupting the group or activity. Thanks in part to the incentive scheme, but equally because of the one-on-one time on offer, the reading was very popular. This meant, unfortunately, that sometimes Learners who were working well in the group had that work interrupted to read. For once there was a positive in the interruption though and many of the young people obviously benefited from the programme. See 'An IRP success story' above.