About the Sheffield REAL Project
The Sheffield REAL project began in 1995, in Sheffield. It brought together the University, the local education authority and many Sheffield schools to promote family literacy work with parents of preschool children.
About the project
The Sheffield REAL (Raising Early Achievement in Literacy) project was the largest preschool literacy intervention study in the UK.
Central to the REAL project programme was the ORIM (Opportunities, Recognition, Interaction, Model) framework. It was designed to think about ways in which families can help children’s early literacy development.
Read about the story of the REAL Project: past, present and future (PDF, 1.9MB).
What is the ORIM framework?
The ORIM framework (PDF, 284KB) is based around parents providing four things for their children: Opportunities, Recognition, Interaction and Models of literacy (Parents’ roles in children’s literacy development (PDF, 105KB)).
It also focuses attention on four key strands of literacy: environmental print, books, early writing and aspects of oral language (ORIM: A framework for practice (PDF, 413KB)).