Reading Together® and Early Reading Together® at Malvern Kāhui Ako

The Malvern Kāhui Ako comprises four Early Childhood Centres, eight Primary Schools and one High School, as detailed here.

Extracts follow from the Malvern Kāhui Ako Literacy webpage here:

Throughout 2019 our learning centres have been planning and taking Reading Together® workshops with their whānau.

All kura (schools) in the Malvern Kāhui Ako have been running Reading Together® workshops with groups of parents and children throughout this term.

Reading Together® involves three workshops held at the kura with the final night being held at our local Darfield Library. Emmaline Sibbald, our local librarian welcomed our schools.  Her wonderful librarians gave us an amazing tour of what they are now offering children (and parents) in the library. We learn about the newest items available to enhance our experience of reading with our children. These include Te Reo picture books, themed book packs and more recently children's books that have the story recorded for listening to as we read. All of these resources are available to the wider community.

We want as many parents as possible to have the opportunity to experience Reading Together® and have been fortunate to gain funding from the Ministry of Education to assist us. This funding means that free childcare is available for parents, there is food - to sustain us during a relaxed one hour session, and some kura providing extras like books and book boxes for the children, certificates and framed photos of parents reading with their children!

Parent feedback is valuable and has included comments such as:
"We definitely find more time to read. Dad helps out more with reading time. Great way to spend more time as a family."
"It has given us heaps of new ways to approach reading and has encouraged us to be more relaxed about reading."

Next term our Early Learning Centres will be running a set of three Early Reading Together® workshops for [parents/whānau of] our wonderful four year olds, and in the future there will be opportunities for our year 7 or 8 parents to attend a workshop [series] involving reading at a very different level.