Schoolchildren become researchers for sibling reading programme
Karla Capstick
Tuesday, October 29, 2019
Primary school children research how their younger siblings engage with books provided by Dolly Parton's Imagination Library.
- Name Small Steps Big Changes
- Provider Nottingham Centre for Children, Young People and Families at Nottingham Trent University
Engaging with children means different things to different people. In Nottingham, the Small Steps Big Changes (SSBC) partnership has embraced the principle of participation, and as part of their local evaluation have incorporated a group of local primary school children to take on the role of researchers. The children have been entrusted with investigating the effectiveness of an intervention designed to boost the home learning environment.
The work is being undertaken by the Nottingham Centre for Children, Young People and Families (NCCYPF) at Nottingham Trent University, who have been commissioned as local evaluation partners to SSBC and have involved both children and parents in an evaluation of the impact of its work.
- A Better Start partnerships
Small Steps Big Changes is one of five A Better Start partnerships funded by The National Lottery Community Fund to work in localities across England to improve outcomes in the early years, from pregnancy to age four.
Each of the partnerships is focused on specific aims, helping children and families to: - Improve their diet and nutrition
- Develop good social and emotional skills
- Build language and communication skills, to help them engage with the world around them.
In Nottingham, the goal of improving language and communication has led to the development of several different strands of work, including Dolly Parton's Imagination Library.
Dolly Parton's Imagination Library is commissioned by SSBC across the four wards it works in. Parents in these areas are able to sign-up to the programme at any time from the birth of their child to their fourth birthday, receiving monthly deliveries of books specifically selected to fire their child's imagination at different ages as they progress towards nursery and school.
Following a birth, health visitors conducting health checks during home visits can enrol children to receive Dolly Parton's Imagination Library books or, as of October this year, parents can also register their children directly through the SSBC team.
The evaluation of Dolly Parton's Imagination Library gathered the views of more than 250 parents with children aged from one to three. But the evaluation team at NCCYPF wanted to go further and understand children's experiences of how the books were being used in families; who was doing the reading with children; and what could be improved?
To get answers to these questions, the evaluation team at the NCCYPF worked in partnership with a local primary school from St Ann's, one of the communities in Nottingham where SSBC commission services, to launch a "sibling researchers" programme. This involved older children co-designing a recording system to research how Dolly Parton's Imagination Library books, and other resources, are used by their younger siblings.
These pupils whose younger siblings were enrolled with Dolly Parton's Imagination Library then recorded their reading activity with their brothers and sisters. This provided a great opportunity for older children to learn more about research by taking an active part in the work of the NCCYPF and SSBC.
Through their records, the children showed the enjoyment that siblings get from sharing books and how reading isn't just for bedtime.
The evaluation work underlines SSBC's commitment to involve children and families in every step of the programme - from co-producing services and support, through delivery and into the all-important stage of measuring impact. This work is not easy but adds greatly to the evaluation and shows that SSBC is a partnership - one embedded within its community.
The evaluation report will be available from the Small Step Big Changes website in late 2019.
www.smallstepsbigchanges.org.uk
- By Karla Capstick, programme director