A WORDSLEY teacher has picked up the top honours at the recent Reading Recovery awards.

Helena Young, of Belle Vue Primary School, won the Teacher of the Year award at the ceremony which celebrated 25 years of the Institute of Education’s (IOE) Reading Recovery Centre.

The Reading Recovery scheme has helped hundreds of thousands of children with complex literacy difficulties to learn how to read.

Helena said: “Being a Reading Recovery teacher is truly a privilege and I am delighted to have won this Teacher of the Year Award.

“It gave me the fundamental teaching skills and structure needed to help children to decode and read for themselves.

“After seven years I continue to believe passionately that by having the initiative in the school we are giving those children who initially struggle the very best support at the right time that we can.”

The school-based intervention is designed for children aged five or six, who are often not able to read the simplest of books or write their own name. It involves intensive one-to-one lessons for 30 minutes a day with a trained literacy teacher.

Helena was given the award by Professor Michael Arthur, provost of University College London, who said: “Children who are helped through Reading Recovery have won a golden ticket to the rest of their lives.

“I am proud to present these awards to the children and the teachers who have helped them to learning how to read.”

Throughout the last 25 years, the Reading Recovery Centre has trained over 8,000 teachers to help children learn to read, which has resulted in 20 million new books being read by children who have taken part in the scheme.