Film: Premier League Reading Stars Training

Transcript

 [Cathy Spence] Premier League Reading Stars is a very focused programme, which increases the progress levels of children, but more than that the engagement in reading.

[Jim Sells] Premier League Reading Stars is a 10-week reading intervention. It is made up of 10 one-hour sessions, known as fixtures. It's a really unique way of bringing together football-loving pupils and getting them excited about reading.

It's a partnership between the Premier League and the National Literacy Trust. Everything that you need in order to deliver a successful intervention is online and can be downloaded for free.

[Sarah Green] The Premier League Reading Stars is a free resource, which is really well and clearly structured. We know that it has got links to the National Curriculum. We know that it has been planned and thought through with rigour.

Would we recommend it to other schools?Absolutely. It's a really easy win for us in terms of reading across the school.

[Jim Sells] We set up Premier League Reading Stars in 2002/2003 as a response to the fact that there are lots of children who are highly-motivated by football, but not so highly-motivated to read.

The content has been written and developed by the National Literacy Trust. And every year we've been developing it and pushing it forward. And we do that by working constantly with teachers,

other literacy professionals, with authors and of course, with pupils as well, to find out what works really well.

[Pupil #1] Putting football and books makes it more exciting, and it's a good mix.

[Jim Sells] The key to the success of Premier League Reading Stars is the opportunity for the person leading the programme to really celebrate those children. To not let them feel like they are yet again being taken away from class, but to be in fact the envy of their peers. The pupils in the rest of the school are looking and going “wow!” “They're a Premier League Reading Star. I want to be a Premier League Reading Star, as well.”

[Jack Giles] They are very, very happy and they are proud to be chosen. And each week when I provide the club, they're constantly talking about it. They're smiling, they're so passionate about it.

[Pupil #2] Ever since I've been in this club, it's really encouraged me to start talking a lot louder and making me read a lot more at home.

[Pupil #3] Ever since I have been joining this amazing club, I've been reading quite a lot.

[Jim Sells] We have clear evidence of the impact of Premier League Reading Stars. Three out of four pupils can make six months' progress in their reading, or more. One in three children will make a year or more's progress in their reading. And seven out of ten pupils, very importantly,

are very proud to be readers now, having gone through the programme. We've also found that the programme has a significant impact on children's reading attitudes, their behaviours, as well of course, their motivation to read.

 [Pupil #4] Every day in the morning when I come, I ask Ben, “Ben are we going to do Reading Stars?”

When he says yes, I'm overjoyed. Ben showed me that reading is really fun.

[Cathy Spence] The children have found friends in books that they didn't know were there. So they've found friends in their Frank Lampard books and they've found friends that they can identify with.

[Pupil #4] I feel loads more confident, more confident than ever.