ABSTRACT
Colin Tyre and Peter Young describe the adoption of a holistic approach, wherein a number of contributing components can be identified, such as general support for the children and parents in the scheme over a prolonged period of time, and the provision of 'holiday schools' to maintain motivation and progress. The reading gains made by second-year junior children after the eight-week long study using the simultaneous-reading mode only convinced Greening and Spenceley that the approach was worth while. Parents of infants who were poor readers were asked to read aloud to their children using books from school. The parental training and the consequent activities seem from a contemporary vantage-point to be fairly blunt, which is inevitable in innovative work that is then replicated and developed from the embryonic idea. Margaret Swindon provides a parent's view of the value of reading for information and pleasure at home, and in particular of the tremendous benefits of family reading.
