The ORIM network
It is a wonderful experience to be in a room filled with people thinking about their work with families around early literacy. This was the case recently, when some 30 members of the ORIM network came to Sheffield to discuss the latest work using the ORIM Framework. ORIM offers a way of thinking about what parents can provide for their children’s learning in terms of Opportunities, Recognition, Interaction, and Models. We heard about exciting work taking place in Blackpool, Dewsbury, London, Oldham, Sheffield, Warwickshire — and many other places around the country. Many of these cases feature in our ORIM Newsletters and on our website.
During the day we heard powerful accounts of engaging families who are often marginalised in the education system, including: work to involve Muslim fathers in their children’s preschool, family literacy in prisons, literacy home visiting, and engaging parents in their children’s early mathematical development. We learned about how social media is being used to support parents in sharing the development of their babies and toddlers, and the power of photographs in celebrating with parents what their young children can do and how they might further support them.
I asked the participating practitioners what they thought it was that made ORIM such a powerful tool for them all, and why it remains relevant and effective more than 25 years after it was first developed by Professor Peter Hannon, here in the School of Education. The feeling was that ORIM could be used as a guide, to help structure and plan work with families, and its power lay in its simplicity. Start with any cell in the Framework and ask ‘What can be done here to support parents?’ Start where families are, with what they have at home, with the things they already do with their children, and build from that.
Our annual network day is an opportunity to share face-to-face, the work we have all been doing, and each presentation confirmed the usefulness and effectiveness of the ORIM Framework which can perhaps be summarised thus: ORIM allows for flexibility, invites creativity, promotes inclusivity. ORIM is flexible because the people who use it make it their own. ORIM offers the opportunity to be creative because new ideas can be developed. ORIM promotes inclusion, because it is meaningful to different cultures and traditions, work can be multilingual and transnational.
ORIM transcends policy boundaries, and has remained useful throughout 25 years of political change in the UK. Three children’s and family-focused charities [The National Children’s Bureau, Peeple, and Pact, the Prison Advice and Care Trust] use ORIM in their work. If I had to sum up work with ORIM in one word, it would be ‘collaboration’ — between practitioners and families, parents and their children, practitioners and their peers, our three charity partners and us here at the University. The ORIM network is another aspect of this great collaborative effort. Lots of amazing work is happening; details are on the Sheffield REAL Project website.
Professor Cathy Nutbrown, The School of Education
Watch the ORIM Collaborations film about how the ORIM Framework is being used in a variety of settings: http://www.real-online.group.shef.ac.uk/index.html
Related reading
Hannon, P. (1995) Literacy, Home and School Research And Practice In Teaching Literacy With Parents London: Routledge
Nutbrown, C., Hannon, P., and Morgan, A (2005) Early Literacy Work with Families: policy, practice and research London: Sage
Email ORIM@sheffield.ac.uk
Website http://www.real-online.group.shef.ac.uk/index.html
Twitter @ORIMnetwork #ORIMnetwork
