Toe By Toe in schools
Toe by Toe has been successfully used in primary and secondary schools since its inception. The reading manual has helped hundreds of thousands of struggling readers keep up with their classmates.
Regardless of the nature of students’ literacy problems, they can be taught to read using Toe By Toe. The severity of their problems may only be reflected in the length of time needed to get through the book. The rapid improvement in reading age is truly astonishing and teachers across the UK and further afield with testify to this.
The Buddy System
Toe By Toe has achieved remarkable results in schools which have used the ‘Buddy System’. This system (also known as mentoring) uses older students to tutor their younger counterparts. This tends to have a positive effect on both parties. Toe By Toe Buddy schemes have been pioneered in the UK by Ynysawdre and Tonyrefail Schools in Wales, Tomlinscote School and The Winston Churchill School in Surrey, Marston Vale Middle School in Bedford, Brownhills High School in Stoke-on-Trent and Fernwood Comprehensive in Nottingham. The change in the schools’ ethos has been quite dramatic.
The success of Toe By Toe as a mentoring tool has prompted similar schemes to be established in a wide range of establishments throughout the world. Minlaton District School is pioneering the use of such schemes in Australia and huge improvements in literacy were seen in prisons through the work of the Shannon Trust.
We are convinced by the results of many Buddy Schemes that they not only improve reading skills, but have a positive effect throughout the school including:
- More responsible attitude of older pupils
- Better social bonds across school years
- Reduced bullying
- Reduced truancy
We actively support schools planning or running Buddy Schemes through workshops, monitoring and general advice.
School/Parent Partnerships
The importance of daily intervention with struggling readers cannot be overestimated. Due to the reinforcement and over-learning built into the Toe By Toe scheme, daily sessions provide by far the best results. The process of dragging a particular sound/skill back into their consciousness after a gap of 24 hours helps to reinforce the ‘pathway’ between sight and sound. In schools, for various reasons, it can be difficult to provide more than 2 or 3 sessions for a particular student in a week. Therefore, if a school can enlist the help of parents to act as coaches when help is not available at school, there is an excellent chance of maintaining daily intervention and thus optimising progress.
Toe By Toe is written in such a way that any literate person can act as coach. Therefore, most parents should be well able to take on this role. However, it is important that the school monitors progress carefully to ensure that the course is being followed as intended. The system of ticks and dots used in Toe By Toe is so simple that monitoring is actually quite easy. We recommend that schools look at books on (say) a weekly basis to ensure that all is going well.
One school with an excellent parent-school partnership in operation is St George’s School, in Edgbaston (Birmingham). Organised by SENCO, Pia Abbott, the school enlists the help of parents who were also assigned ‘teacher mentors’. Each teacher takes on 3 to 5 families and monitors progress carefully. Tea parties, theatre trips etc have been organised to give cohesion to the scheme. Unswerving support from the Principal down has resulted in marvellously effective school-wide literacy training. The scheme started in February 2006 and has yielded impressive results.
Parents
Pupils
Teachers
Toe By Toe In Primary Schools
Toe By Toe is used in primary schools across the UK.
Cramond Primary School in Edinburgh is one such school. They are using the Toe by Toe programme to support young readers.
In their words: “We firmly believe that it is an excellent resource and urge parents to take part in helping their children to complete it.”
The team at Cramond Primary have produced this excellent presentation for parents to assist in the teaching of Toe by Toe. We are delighted to be able to share it with you and hope you find it helpful. You can download the presentation here.
