Achieving excellence in literacy

In 2006, William Tyndale Primary School became one of the first schools in Islington to introduce Reading Recovery. Since then, Reading Recovery has become an integral part of the school's approach to ensuring that no child leaves William Tyndale unable to read and write and all children enjoy reading for pleasure.

Our school has a full-time Reading Recovery teacher, supported by an accredited Reading Recovery Teacher Leader, who both teaches and advises on widening its impact across the school.  Reading Recovery is now an integral element within our literacy provision at Key Stage One, providing another way to learn for those children who, despite having had high-quality phonics teaching, are falling behind their peers. Often these children are our most vulnerable, having been identified as being significantly at risk of literacy failure by the Early Intervention Team. Reading results by the end of KS2 are a testament to this intervention.

We are also a Reading Recovery Training Centre and offer professional development to all schools. Please see below for further details. 

Reading Recovery provides:

  • An individual, tailored programme of lessons with a Reading Recovery teacher (12-20 weeks)
  • A Reading Recovery specialist teacher who works with the class teacher, teaching guided reading to struggling readers
  • On-going  staff training on assessment, comprehension, phonological awareness and speech and language difficulties
  • Offering all Reading Recovery parents support and guidance on supporting their children at home

 

Professional Development

William Tyndale has had a one-way mirror installed into its school and is now the centre for Reading Recovery across Islington, Camden and Westminster. At present there is a CPD group running in the centre.

The school also offers Initial Teacher Training, which involves 20 half day professional development sessions, with live lesson observations, in-depth assessment, detailed analysis of teaching and learning, and practical advice and guidance. 

From this training, your Reading Recovery teacher will:

  • Develop a deep understanding of children’s learning and early literacy acquisition
  • Learn skills to assess and overcome children’s learning barriers
  • Become reflective of teaching decisions and their impact on children’s learning
  • Become an expert for the school of diagnostic assessment for literacy

Next course dates: TBC

Please contact Peggy for further information at:

peggy.ashton@williamtyndale.islington.sch.uk

Testimonials

Reading Recovery is a remarkable programme offered at just the right time to children at William Tyndale. We were lucky to have Peggy working with our daughter over a few months and the progress was astounding. She started the programme avoiding reading because she couldn't quite figure it out. Working with Peggy each day gave her the tools to unlock this wonderful world of reading. Watching Peggy work with her made me realize that teaching someone to read takes serious skills. My daughter is now reading on her own, excited to read everything when we go out and hopefully has developed a lifelong love of reading from this programme. Thank you so much, Peggy, for your passion and being a master of your craft! – Parent 2024

 

Both my children went through the Reading Recovery program at William Tyndale with Peggy.  The help that they received has been invaluable not only to their ability to read but also to their overall confidence and their increasing interest in reading itself. When I asked my children what they'd thought of their time with Peggy they responded that it had been a fun way to learn to read, that they had felt challenged but that it had been enjoyable too.  As they charged through the reading levels the sense of achievement that they felt made them feel very proud of themselves. - Parent

 

As they were going through the program with Peggy the changes were so rapid they were obviously noticeable to me on a daily basis as I read with them at home.  I could see that they had developed skills to help them to decipher and decode that they would keep with them for the rest of their lives.

Peggy has a manner that is best described as fun, firm and fair.  She pushes them to try things that they might not usually try in an everyday classroom environment and at the same time gives them the confidence that they know this and that they can do it.  She uses creative and inventive ways to harness their interest and takes her time to understand the motivations and triggers for each child. Both my children love Peggy and speak so fondly of their time with her.

I still can't really believe that the school offers such a programme; my children were able to benefit from one-to-one tuition for half an hour each day.  I can't really describe the life-long benefit that this has given my children.

Thank you for everything, Peggy. - Lucy 2016

 

Reading Recovery has been one of the most influential inputs for my teaching practice since joining William Tyndale, both as a whole class teacher and as an intervention teacher.

I have had the opportunity to observe two reading recovery teachers and the wide range of strategies they use to support the development of reading. These observations, along with collaborative working with the teachers, has taught me that children who find reading challenging may have one or some of a wide range of different, complex needs. My eyes have opened to this range of need, how to assess them and the different strategies that can be used to support them for both reading and writing. I had the opportunity to observe several children in a reading recovery session that I also teach in a guided reading group. One of the reading recovery teachers then came to observe me teaching my group and gave me lots of very useful feedback, including new strategies to try. It is so useful to know what a child can achieve 1:1 in RR as then high expectations can be made in class.  I notice the children who have had Reading Recovery because they have an extensive armoury of strategies to use to make sense of the printed word. If one strategy does not work they are able to move to another and this is what helps them to progress. By observing Reading Recovery I too know some of these strategies and can encourage the children to continue to use them in a small group or class setting.  Finally, Reading Recovery has been so valuable because the teachers are such experts in their field and they are so collaborative. Every approach is backed up by the latest research and this research is shared among the teaching staff. The Reading Recovery teachers are also very creative in their planning for reading or writing activities, in guided reading, book clubs and literacy, and this inspires class teachers to incorporate this creative approach into their own planning. - Beth Frost, Teacher 2016

 

Reading Recovery with Peggy has had an enormously positive effect on my daughter, not only in the advances she’s made with reading and writing and her vocabulary, but real growth in her self-confidence and sense of self-worth, which has had a huge impact on all areas of her learning at school. Peggy is hugely insightful and approachable, so that we have felt our daughter was fully seen and understood and her specific set of needs responded to. Likewise, Peggy has shown us how best to help and support our daughter which has been really valuable.  - Kay Buchan - Integrative Arts Psychotherapist 2016