Our approach

Coram Beanstalk wants all children to choose to read.

There is a wealth of research showing that when we read because we want to – not because we are being told to or feel we have to – it makes a significant difference to how successful we are in education, how good we feel and how well we do in life. Coram Beanstalk have been putting a 'reading for pleasure' approach to work since 1973: we were doing it successfully long before it came – rightly – to such prominence in academic and educational circles.

For children to choose to be read to and to read themselves, they need the experience to be positive: enjoyable, satisfying, and involving… and for what they are being asked to do to be within their grasp.

Put simply, Coram Beanstalk equips adults and young people to 'do reading' better with children because the more children encounter confident, capable and inspiring support with their reading – at home, in school and in life – the more they are likely to get on and stay on the path to becoming a reader.

So, we enthuse and enable people to put best practice, based on half a century of experience and the latest evidence, into action:

  • Our volunteers – who provide consistent support to children who have fallen behind and need more intensive or longer-term help to change their attitude to reading and build their reading skills, ability and confidence.

  • School schemes and peer mentoring programmes – which bring the motivation of the wider school community, and of older students, to help ensure that children at risk of falling behind or becoming reluctant to read stay on track.

  • Professionals and wider community groups – who want to understand how a reading for pleasure approach can enhance their own practice.

And we do this from early years, through primary education and into early secondary, by helping children develop their key pre-reading skills, as they are learning to read and as they go on to become effective readers who, rather than disengaging because other uses of their time seem more attractive, continue to choose to read independently because they know it brings value to their lives.

One-to-one reading support – from all quarters - changes children’s lives: most dramatically the lives of those children who would otherwise be excluded from the benefits and pleasure that reading can bring.

Find out more about volunteering

Find out more about our reading support programmes and training courses for schools

Find out more about our training courses for parents

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