Posted: 13/03/15
ARROW points the way to studio school success
A leading expert in literacy development has brought an innovative learning package to Mansfield’s Vision Studio School.
Lead learner coach Rob Penn, student Casey McMillan and Dr Colin Lane try out the ARROW system
Dr Colin Lane, who has appeared on the BBC’s Tomorrow’s World, pioneered his multi-sensory technique in 1974. It was designed to dramatically improve spelling, grammar and literacy, and he featured with the product on the popular show in 1976 and 1996.
Last week he presented the project to tutors at Vision Studio School, which is sponsored by West Nottinghamshire College and caters for learners aged 14 to 19, with a view to the system being rolled out to all of its students.
Tutors plan to introduce Dr Lane’s project, which improves students’ skills, via specialist tutorial sessions to the learners who are studying engineering and transport as well as health and care alongside their GCSEs.
The package, known as ARROW – which stands for Aural, Read, Respond, Oral, Write – teaches students to improve their skills, by recording their own voice and listening back. The technique used is via the ‘self voice’ and uses a tailor made package on the laptop incorporating headphones and recording equipment.
Dr Lane said: “With ARROW the students are listening back to the training exercises and it’s their own voice they hear. It’s been proven that we learn better by listening to the ‘self voice’.
“Nationally the statistics show that within five hours of learning through ARROW there’s a marked improvement in abilities – sometimes as much as eight months’ progress. I’m very confident that Vision Studio School will notice the benefits to their learners’ progress soon.”
Lead learning coach at the school, Rob Penn, said: “We’re going to begin the programme by giving all our Year 10 students a personalised spelling programme. We’ll map this out for them and it will be bespoke to their individual needs in literacy. It will enable them to work at their own pace and should hopefully lead to real improvements in spelling, reading and writing.
“It’s a really exciting programme to pilot and we’ve already seen benefits from some of our students who tried out Dr Lane’s programme.”
