Peer Support
The Peer Tutoring at Cromer Campus
The Peer Tutoring Program was first introduced to NSW schools in 1999 as part of the Literacy and Numeracy initiative targeting curriculum needs of students in Years 5 to 8. There are now more than 260 secondary schools running the program in the state.
The reasons it is so popular and we continue to run it so enthusiastically at Cromer after five years are various. Perhaps the most significant feature is that the tutors, who are Year 10 students at our school, become accredited with the Literacy Volunteer Tutoring (Schools) certificate upon successful completion of the program. This means that the Year 10 tutors complete approximately 20 hours of theory and 30 hours of face-to-face reading with their allocated Year 7 student tutee, during the year.
The Tear 10 Tutors are supported in their TAFE training and their fieldwork at school by a fully qualified literacy teacher at TAFE, and the Support Teacher for Learning Assistance at school. The TAFE teacher regularly visits the school to monitor the Tutors and for further instruction in the reading method used, 'Pause, Prompt and Praise'.
The program runs in the Library for 15 minutes a day during Group. To meet the number of fieldwork hours required it operates daily for approximately three terms.
The other major pluses from the program are the significant literacy gains made by the Year 7 tutees and the social skills developed by both the Year 10 and Year 7 students.
We have found the Year 7 students thrive on peer-instruction in reading and the Year 10 students gain independence, self-esteem and maturity. We highly commend the TAFE accredited Peer Tutoring Program to any high school that has not yet come on board, as we know it to be one of the great achievements of Cromer Campus.
Julie Gregg
Support Teacher for Learning Assistance.
