Saturday reading classes
No matter their background, children's reading ages soar after twenty hours of teaching
Since 1999, when Real Action opened our first Butterfly Saturday Reading School, we have demonstrated that children have only to be taught directly, simply, speedily and interactively by the scripted Butterfly programme by Irina Tyk. Up leap their reading ages.
No matter how deprived their background may be, their reading ages will rocket up – by a year, on average, in just twenty hours’ Butterfly teaching. Children identified by their schools with the following labels - Free School Meals FSM, Pupil Premium PP, English as Additional Language EAL, Special Educational Needs SEN, boys – are, we find, expected to underperform. Personal disadvantage is thought to result in educational underperformance. Such children proliferate among the residential and school communities that we serve. The thousands of these children who come flocking to our Butterfly classes do well, we find
This is how we work. This is our methodology. We pre-test each child individually, assigning each one to a class according to reading age, not calendar age. We do not have them grouped around tables, mobile in rooms, or seated before screens. We seat them in ordered rows, facing their teacher, with a hovering classroom assistant to help keep them focused. Our Saturday teachers are highly motivated volunteers.
Our current main area of operation is in parts of West London. It is from here that we are fanning out.
