London Evening Standard:
'Reading is the gift I hope to pass on to these children at St Mary's'
This is an inspiring read - and what an amazing gift for a school community to receive!
Well done!
Imagine if all the volunteers were trained in the synthetic phonics teaching principles:His father's urgent words to him as a young boy growing up in rural Ukraine, that reading was "the tool you need to achieve something in life", spurred Kostyantin Zhevago into action.
The youngest self-made billionaire in Europe, according to Forbes magazine, Mr Zhevago, 37, has donated £100,000 to help us turn around St Mary's, a neglected primary school in the shadow of Battersea power station.
The amazingly generous pledge from the chief executive of Ferrexpo, the first Eastern European company to be listed on the London Stock Exchange main market, will be used to fund 85 reading volunteers at St Mary's, where half the children fail to make the grade in English and maths, and 80 per cent do not speak English as their first language.
Whilst supporting children to read, they could say:
"In this word, those letters ARE CODE FOR the /.../ sound."
Or they could model the sounding out and blending process.
Or they could tell the learner the word - RATHER THAN telling the learner to GUESS the word.
I appreciate that they will also make great conversation with the children and develop their oral language skills - and also read aloud to the children to enrich their language and comprehension.