New school year, new stories: volunteers bring confidence to the classrooms

The new school year is now in full swing – which means our volunteers are getting stuck into their new One-to-one Reading Programmes too.

September is a crucial time for children to receive individual reading support to combat the effects of the Summer Slide. Over the holidays, without the structure of school or adults available to read with them, children can lose up to two months of reading progress. The knock-on effect is significant: not only can children fall behind academically, but they can lose confidence, fall out of love with reading and disengage from learning altogether.

That’s where our volunteers step in. Our trained volunteers are paired with children to read together, once or twice a week for 30-minutes. Through the programme, children can regain any skills lost over the summer quickly, grow in confidence and reignite a love for reading. In the 2024 – 25 academic year, our volunteers delivered 40,239 one-to-one reading sessions.

In this blog discover what Jane, Gail and Anne – three of our wonderful volunteers and community ambassadors – are most looking forward to this academic year as they help to bring back a reading confidence to the classroom.

For Jane, the magic lies in sharing the joy of reading. She loves helping children feel proud of their reading progress and sparking an excitement of delving into stories.

She explains that September is “a very special time to encourage readers and make them feel good about themselves.” As the academic year progresses, she is excited to continue to “encourage them”, boosting both confidence and reading skills along the way.

At Bookmark, we want to spark a lasting joy of reading to encourage reading for pleasure. Our volunteers are a key part of achieving this, with Jane ensuring that the key focus of her sessions is to ensure her readers “have a good time.”

Our volunteers help children build their confidence in reading and beyond, as Jane explains how she is excited to also more generally enhance children’s self-esteem and overall sense of wellbeing.

Gail: easing the busy school week with focused reading time

Our volunteers understand how busy the beginning of school can be: although the new classrooms, new friendships and a new timetable are exciting for most children, Gail knows that others can find this “time of change” a bit “overwhelming […] especially after the quiet of the summer holidays.”

Gail is looking forward to providing a relaxing time away from this busyness. Our regular reading sessions are “that time in the week which is relatively quiet away from the hurly-burly of the classroom where children have some one-to-one time with their volunteer focused entirely on them.”

Though some children “might have fallen behind a bit in the summer holidays”, Gail notices just how quickly progress can be made due to the unique “one-to-one setting” of our One-to-one Reading Programme.

Anne: setting children up for their best year of reading yet

“One of the things that becomes very obvious when you’re working with children [is] how little, if any, reading they do at home.”

Anne herself has noticed the effects of the Summer Slide in readers when she begins her One-to-one Reading Programmes in September. Children may have “lost a lot of skills they had” and might’ve “lost confidence in it” too.

What Anne finds the most valuable is the ability to combat this and help children get “off to a good start at the beginning of the school year.” Our volunteers provide “that crucial one-to-one work which schools don’t have the facilities to do”, ensuring that children can “hit the ground running” for their best year of reading yet.

The diverse range of stories and literary games available in volunteer sessions supports children in developing their reading skills at a pace and in a manner individual to them.

It’s fantastic to hear our volunteers are excited to get stuck into their new reading programmes this academic year. The support they provide to their readers is crucial in expanding reading skills and rediscovering a confidence and joy in reading.

If you’d like to share this excitement and help a child discover a world of stories, sign up to volunteer with us today.