[senco-forum] Re Learning to read

Felicity

You mention 'writing' - an area of literacy which is currently at the centre of my own thinking. Children who have graduated to secondary school with very poor reading skills also inevitably also have very poor writing skills in addition to the extensive baggage which Ruth described so completely.  Ideally, a good writer is able to communicate his/her thoughts in writing but that is something these children have no experience of.

I developed an approach, centrally for the development of listening skills but using literacy skills generally, and writing in particular, as the medium for this development. What the children are getting out of it, is a term's concentrated experience of writing to a good standard of English as a consequence of controlled dictation exercises which are structured to take into account their literary limitations. Based on the fact that it is a skill which I am seeking to improve,  there is no route other than practice and the trick is to make the practice sessions acceptable to a group who have little faith in their own ability in academic areas.

This work is producing good results in terms of the technical standard of written work. It is not so far, making these children any more creative in their writing but it is providing them with the tools to express whatever level of creativity they do possess including the tools of punctuation. You can produce good gains in reading with most children in one term but this is not an area in which you can expect quick results. Plan to secure gains in creative writing skills over nothing less that a full academic year.

Eddie C.  