Volunteers are Working Wonders " Helping Adults Learn To Read"

Wigan-based Skills for Life provider Working Wonders is training volunteers to help adults with low levels of reading ability.  The popular "Helping Adults Learn to Read" course is exclusive to Working Wonders. The aim of the course is to encourage people to become volunteers to help people with low levels of literacy to improve their skills.

The photograph shows volunteers who have completed the training when they received their certificates at Bramble House in Worsley Hall.  They are: Catherine Tomlinson, Catherine Pendlebury, Noel Wilde, Sylvia Kenyon and Andrea McCabe...

Volunteers are Working Wonders " Helping Adults Learn To Read"

Wigan-based Skills for Life provider Working Wonders is training volunteers to help adults with low levels of reading ability.  The popular "Helping Adults Learn to Read" course is exclusive to Working Wonders. The aim of the course is to encourage people to become volunteers to help people with low levels of literacy to improve their skills.

The photograph shows volunteers who have completed the training when they received their certificates at Bramble House in Worsley Hall.  They are: Catherine Tomlinson, Catherine Pendlebury, Noel Wilde, Sylvia Kenyon and Andrea McCabe.

The "Helping Adults Learn To Read" course includes training to deliver Working Wonders' exclusive  "Reading Programme".   Recent advances in technology have given scientists and educationalists far greater understanding of why reading problems occur for so many people.  This information has allowed educationalists to devise programmes designed to try to rectify the problems.  Working Wonders' Manager Joyce Hanlon has adapted such a programme for use with adults with low reading ability.  Joyce Hanlon said: "As far as I am aware this is the first time this type of programme has been used with adults." 

Joyce Hanlon said: "We recently trialled the Reading Programme. Participants in the pilot project had very low levels of literacy and had obviously experienced failure in basic reading tasks for the whole of their lives, with all the resulting impact on their self-esteem and confidence levels. At the end of the programme, the results showed that adults with very low levels of reading accuracy increased on average, 1 yr in just 6 hours of intervention.  This sort of significant increase in skills levels, over a short period of time, shows people - who have experienced a lifetime of failure with reading - that they can learn.  It offers hope which was shown in the pilot be motivational by helping to begin the process of building confidence, self-esteem and aspiration.

In our society, reading is obviously a fundamental skill. If people do not become fluent in reading, they are at a great disadvantage. As almost all jobs today require a functional level of reading ability, finding work is very difficult and sustaining employment even more so if this functional level has not been achieved.  The Reading Programme is an attempt to break this cycle of failure that so many people with low reading ability experience

The course is designed to begin training volunteers to deliver the specialised reading programme which can be delivered by "lightly trained" volunteers and paid support staff. The low set-up and running costs of the Reading Programme gives it a flexibility which means that help can be delivered where and when it is needed to those who need it most.

If you would like to find out more about becoming a volunteer, please contact Working Wonders ( 01942 498600).