Mentors promote reading skills

Fifth form pupils at the Albert Schweitzer secondary school in Bochum receive intensified support in German class. For one hour per week UW/H students act as mentors for individual children, read books with them and do spelling and dictation exercises.

Medical UW/H students Ulla Spitzer, Maja Dusanic and Maximiliane Zwerenz started this initiative in October 2010. In the context of other projects they observed the considerable difficulties many children still have with reading and writing German after four years of primary school. The school board’s response to the concept they presented was very positive. 

Basically students are free to decide on the type of exercises they want to do. Mostly the hour starts with the pupil describing his or her day. The next step is reading, dictation exercises, and looking up difficult words in the dictionary. The books the pupils read from may be anything: “Kleine Hexe” by Ottfried Peußler, or “Kollaps” by Jared Diamond. The main thing is that the pupils enjoy what they read. In between there may be a relaxing round of games or rope skipping, picture drawing, or even press-ups or knee-bends. These monitored reading sessions have met with unqualified approval by pupils, students and teachers. Pupils who have not been assigned to a student so far vociferously demand “their own student”. 

The group meets once per month to discuss progress, problems and specific issues. School welfare worker Berens attends regularly; he knows the children well and contributes pertinent information.

Prof. Dr. Martini monitors the project at UW/H and also attends these meetings. She knows about the excellent results of intensive case work, has personal experience in the field and lots of valuable suggestions for the student team.