School launches new initiative to support literacy

A grant from award-winning developer, Hopkins Homes, has enabled Ermine Street Church Academy at Alconbury Weald to purchase 15 Djembe Drums as part of a new initiative designed to support its students’ reading and writing.

Adrian Shepherd, Headteacher at Ermine Street Church Academy said:

“Recent research has confirmed that using rhythm has a positive impact on children’s learning. The drumming helps the children to identify syllables and patterns within words and so has a positive impact on reading and spelling in particular. We are very excited to be embarking on this new program and are grateful to Hopkins Homes for purchasing the drums and making this initiative possible.

“We had the first lesson today and already I could see the children benefiting from using language and rhythm at the same time. They also had a lot of fun.”

A professional drum teacher will be teaching the lessons for the first few weeks and helping the staff and children to get to grips with the techniques.

Jill Bryce, Marketing Manager at Hopkins Homes was on hand to see the first lesson:

“This is a great programme that we are delighted to support. I really enjoyed taking part in the lesson, it was amazing how quickly the children were picking up the rhythms and their enthusiasm was infectious.”

The initiative is being run by class teacher, Pauline Barker. Initial assessments have been made of the children’s current levels of reading and spelling and these will be followed up with regular monitoring to quantify the effects the lessons are having on learning.

Hopkins HomesErmine Street Church Academy