Have We Met Our Objectives?

Our objectives of our project where to:

1.     Raise the achievement of boys in reading at St         Mary’s Catholic School

2.     Improve the library and maintain it

3.     Create a display

4.     Create a partner reading scheme for Key Stage Two

Objective 1:

As we only had 5 sessions at St Mary’s and the project was completed on session 5 it is hard to know whether we have raised the achievement of boys in reading. We were told that there was a current gap between male and female pupils at St Mary’s however, the school test the pupils and track achievement. We are unable to test the child and access the data to track improvement and test results as it is confidential information. It was clear to us that the pupils were extremely excited by our display and seemed interested to interact and write book recommendations and use the book reviews when picking new books from the library. We hope that the increased interest in the library will lead to raising the achievement of boys in reading.

On reflection, we should have organised the project to see if we ask the teachers to set assessments or a small reading task we could do with the students to then compare results to see whether our project did have an impact.

Objective 2:

In every session on arrival we would tidy the library from the previous session and keep it clean. We would organise the books that had been left out and returned book using the colour coded system that St Mary’s use. They had some books that we donated and hadn’t been coloured coded or added to the system. We organised the donated books and made them part of the library improving the range of books the library has.

Objective 3:

Creating a display was the main part of our project. We completed the display which included a signpost of where reading can take you, book reviews, book recommendations and jobs that require reading. The display was more time-consuming than we thought however, the school rejected our ideas of a reading corner and reading partners. Our other ideas being rejected meant that we could focus on the display and complete it to a high standard including different interactive features. It was great to see the pupil’s reaction to the display as they were very excited. We feel we have increased the interest of the pupils in the library through creating an interactive and engaging display however, we are unable to find out if it has increased achievement for the St Mary’s pupils.

Objective 4:

We were unable to carry out the scheme of the partner reading as the Deputy head said they do not have time due to the current timetable. However, we presented the research and explained that it is a great strategy to improve achievement for male pupils. After this discussion Isaac said that he would try to implement it next term in the afternoons or maybe instead of the individual class library slots.