[senco-forum] Freshstart

A while a go, I emailed the forum to ask if anyone had tried the Freshstart
program (the upper KS1 / Secondary Read Write Inc program by Ruth Miskin).
I didn't receive a single reply, apart from someone, who also wanted to know
if it was any good, so I thought that you might be interested in what
happened when we introduced it.  We have been using it for over a term now
and the results are really good.  I'd been on the 2 day training and hadn't
really believed the trainer when she sang its praises, but she told the
truth!  We are using it is with a group of seven children in year 5, who
have a variety of problems, attendance, emotional, behavioural, 'dyslexic
type difficulties', dyspraxic etc. and despite having a very mixed range of
needs, every one  of them has made significant progress in a very short
space of time.  They were working at the top end of level 1 and at level 2.
It is being taught by an extremely good teaching assistant in place of the
literacy hour five days a week, supported by the senior management team, who
are 'on hand' when required to deal with behavioural issues.  Recently I
held pupil conferencing meetings with these children and every one of them
was very positive about it, understood the progress that they had made and
wanted to continue it in year 6.  Behaviour in the group has improved
greatly and this has had a knock on effect into other lessons as their
confidence has increased.  This term, we are introducing it in Year 4.  The
ultimate aim, is for these pupils to rejoin the rest of the class in the
literacy hour- an aim which doesn't look to be too far in the future.  

Clare