How Fenwick Primary added value to the reading experience

When expectations are growing but budgets are falling, you have to be confident that how you spend that budget has a strong impact in the classroom, and is therefore really great value for money.

Giglets Education supports teachers in revolutionising their literacy teaching through a multi-award-winning online literacy resource at budget-friendly prices. Giglets transforms ‘teaching reading’ into an entire experience, which engages pupils across the board and can support individual, group, and whole class reading both in the classroom and at home.

Keira Finlayson joined Fenwick Primary School in East Ayrshire in Scotland as Headteacher in 2017, and was keen to develop innovative teaching methods within her staff, as well as to build strong partnership links with families.

“Giglets added another dimension to our literacy programme. It’s a high-quality, engaging resource with huge capacity for differentiation. Being able to use it, in class and at home, with all learners, while targeting individual pupils and groups is very beneficial.

“Since introducing Giglets, we have seen great engagement from pupils, parents and teachers. Pupils find the digital element really motivational and parents enjoy using it with their children at home.”

 

To make reading an immersive experience, Giglets books are enhanced by animations, theme music, audio and illustrations and pupils are able to totally personalise their reading experience through choosing their font, font size, font colour and page colour using the accessible book reader.

Keira also knows all too well that physical books can so quickly go missing or become ruined and recognises the strain this puts on the school budget.

“It’s having access to such a wide variety of books across all the ages and stages, as well as texts of a lower reading level but higher interest level, that makes Giglets excellent value for money. We would be unable to buy as many physical copies to share among our pupils. With Giglets, every pupil has their own copy to read and annotate.”

Supporting each book within Giglets there are question sets and curriculum-specific tasks that centre around developing confidence in using various reading strategies to understand a text.

“There are so many tasks for teachers to use both in class and at home which frees up planning and preparation time for teachers. Teachers enjoy having a huge bank of resources and can use Giglets both for curriculum-focused work as well as reading for enjoyment with their classes.”

Fenwick Primary School is an excellent example of how Giglets can and should be used to add value to the reading (and learning) experience.

 

Giglets is used by teachers and pupils at schools throughout the UK, from London to Liverpool, from Cardiff to Glasgow, and from Essex to Humberside to Aberdeen. Further afield, schools in Australia, Qatar and Switzerland use the resource.