Spark
Spark is a reading program for primary school students that would benefit most from developing their literacy and conversational skills, along with building their vocabulary.
Reading mentors provide encouragement for a student to engage further in their schooling and community through improved language skills and personal development.
What is involved
Two volunteers from member companies are matched with primary school students to provide one-on-one reading mentoring and support. Every week, for two terms, the volunteers alternate visiting the school and reading with the student for an hour. This means that each volunteer visits the school only once a fortnight.
Benefits for students
'The mentors are making such a significant impact on the students, both academically and socially.' Teacher
- Improve literacy skills
- Increase confidence and self esteem
- Raise achievements and aspirations
- Enhance personal and social skills
- Improve employability in the long term
- Broaden horizons beyond immediate family and school.
Benefits for reading mentors
'On a personal note, it's very rewarding watching your student improve every time you see them. They are very excited and truly grateful of the time…which is a slightly humbling experience.' Mentor
- Increase awareness of issues in the broader community
- Opportunity to contribute to the community
- Improve skills and job satisfaction
- Enjoyment in spending time reading with children.
More information
Read about the program's success.
Research note
Students who struggle to read like their peers often feel like they can't learn. This can lead to low self-esteem and social implications, such as poor behaviour, that can hinder them later in life. Teachers recognise the value of one-to-one reading and mentoring sessions but find it difficult to provide the necessary support because of the class sizes.
There has been much research into the factors which influence literacy achievement in children. One such factor is the socio-economic background of the child. While not true for all children, the research shows that in general, children of parents from upper professional and managerial occupations have significantly higher average levels of literacy achievement than children of parents from clerical and skilled manual occupations, who in turn have higher average levels of literacy achievement than children of parents from unskilled, manual occupations (Mapping Literacy Achievement: Results of the 1996 National School English Literacy Survey, DETA).
However, while the ‘starting levels of children from less advantaged backgrounds is lower than those from more advantaged backgrounds, findings from a large body of evidence-based research consistently indicate that quality teaching has significant positive effects on students’ achievement progress regardless of their backgrounds’ (Teaching Reading, Report and Recommendations, National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy, 2005, DEST).
Providing children with structured additional reading practice contributes to successfully learning to read. The SPARK program supports classroom teaching through one on one mentoring sessions and has been proven to support increased literacy and other positive outcomes for children who participate.
