Posts Tagged ‘Reading’

Newer Entries »

Inspiring Teacher Who Taught Herself To Read

April 3, 2011

Below is an excerpt of an article about the inspiring teacher, Patty Gillespie, who was given passage through school without ever knowing how to read or write.  The article chronicles her struggle from an illiterate youth to her prominence as a brilliant teacher and devotee of helping instill a love of reading in kids:

Teaching comes naturally to Gillespie, a small woman who wears dresses to school, smiles a lot and waves her hands when she talks.

So does giving. Gillespie, whose favorite book is Shel Silverstein’s “The Giving Tree,” gives away hundreds of donated books at school each year.

Being a student wasn’t as easy.

Gillespie, who grew up in Massachusetts, loved to play “school” before she was old enough to go. By first grade, she couldn’t keep up with her classmates in reading lessons. It would be years before learning disabilities were diagnosed.

“You could show me pictures of apples and say the short ‘a,’ and I heard ‘uh,’ ” she said. “To just hear the isolated sounds didn’t work.”

Help was hard to come by in an era when special education was for severely disabled children. Private tutors used the same phonics lessons that teachers did, so they read Gillespie’s schoolbooks to her instead.

Gillespie, a popular student, carefully hid her problems from classmates. She raised her hand to answer questions only when everybody else did; when she was called on, she told teachers she’d forgotten what to say.

By high school, her English teachers asked the same question each year: How did you get here without knowing how to read or write?

“It may have been wrong, but I think teachers continued to pass me because I tried so hard,” she said.

Gillespie also made it into Westfield State College in 1971, despite low scores on the SAT college entrance exam.

Gillespie’s parents knew she struggled. Still, for her they wanted the education they’d never had.

Her father, an insurance salesman, had turned down a scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania so he could support his family. “I just said, ‘Hey, without the degree you won’t get very far in life,’ ” said Gillespie’s father, Bob Watson, 89.

Gillespie lived at home and drove to campus for classes. She was just as lost there as she had been in high school. This time, she found little sympathy from teachers.

The closer Gillespie got to academic probation – she says she was two-tenths of a point away her first semester – the more she wanted to walk away from her college education.

She changed her mind after a stern warning from her father: If that’s what you want to do, then quit. But remember you’ll always be a quitter.

“That really changed my life,” she said. “I wasn’t going to let him down.”

Gillespie started with vowels, using the pronunciation key of a dictionary and pictures instead of sounds.

For short “a,” she envisioned a black cat; an ape for long “a.”

She studied in her bedroom, between classes, up to eight hours a day for a year. In the beginning, it took two hours to get through three paragraphs of a textbook. Gillespie wouldn’t let herself turn the page until she understood what she’d read.

Not once did she want to quit.

“I knew I could do it,” she said. “That was the first time in my life.”

The full article is slightly longer.  I strongly recommend you read the full piece.  What a teacher!  What a story!

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Inspirational Teachers, Literacy | 1 Comment »

50 Books Every Child Should Read

March 24, 2011

I stumbled on a wonderful piece by the Independent entitled The 50 Books Every Child Should Read. It was written in response to Michael Gove’s recommendation that children read 50 books a year.  They asked three of Britain’s leading children’s authors and two of their in-house book experts to each pick 10 books, suitable for Year 7 students.”

Below is the list:

Philip Pullman

* Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll. Indispensable. The great classic beginning of English children’s literature.

* Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi. What effortless invention looks like.

* Emil and the Detectives by Erich Kastner. A great political story: democracy in action.

* Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome. As clear and pure as Mozart.

* Black Hearts in Battersea by Joan Aiken. If Ransome was Mozart, Aiken was Rossini. Unforced effervescence.

* The Owl Service by Alan Garner. Showed how children’s literature could sound dark and troubling chords.

* The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. Superb wit and vigorous invention.

* Moominsummer Madness by Tove Jansson. Any of the Moomin books would supply the same strange light Nordic magic.

* A Hundred Million Francs by Paul Berna. A particular favourite of mine, as much for Richard Kennedy’s delicate illustrations (in the English edition) as for the story.

* The Castafiore Emerald by Hergé. Three generations of this family have loved Tintin. Perfect timing, perfect narrative tact and command, blissfully funny.

Michael Morpurgo

* The Star of Kazan by Eva Ibbotson.

The heroine is blessed with such wonderful friends who help her through the twists and turns of this incredible journey.

* A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. The first few pages were so engaging, Marley’s ghostly face on the knocker of Scrooge’s door still gives me the shivers.

* Just William books by Richmal Crompton. These are a must for every child.

* The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde. This was the first story, I think, that ever made me cry and it still has the power to make me cry.

* The Elephant’s Child From The Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling. The story my mother used to read me most often, because I asked for it again and again. I loved the sheer fun of it, the music and the rhythm of the words. It was subversive too. Still my favourite story.

* Treasure Island by R.L. Stevenson This was the first real book I read for myself. I lived this book as I read it.

* The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. A classic tale of man versus nature. I wish I’d written this.

* The Man Who Planted Trees by Jean Giono. A book for children from 8 to 80. I love the humanity of this story and how one man’s efforts can change the future for so many.

* The Singing Tree by Kate Seredy The story of two children who go to find their father who has been listed missing in the trenches of the First World War.

* The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson-Burnett. I love this story of a girl’s life being changed by nature.

Katy Guest, literary editor for The Independent on Sunday

* Refugee Boy by Benjamin Zephaniah. Story of a young Ethiopian boy, whose parents abandon him in London to save his life.

* Finn Family Moomintroll (and the other Moomin books) by Tove Jansson.

A fantasy series for small children that introduces bigger ones to ideas of adventure, dealing with fear, understanding character and tolerating difference.

* Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney. It’s rude, it’s funny and it will chime with every 11-year-old who’s ever started a new school.

* I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith. Written for a teenage audience but fun at any age.

* The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkein. Be warned, these tales of hobbits, elves and Middle Earth are dangerously addictive.

* The Tygrine Cat (and The Tygrine Cat on the Run) by Inbali Iserles. If your parents keep going on at you to read Tarka the Otter, The Sheep-Pig and other animal fantasies, do – they’re great books – also try Iserles’ stories about a cat seeking his destiny.

* Carry On, Jeeves by PG Wodehouse. A grown-up book – but not that grown-up.

* When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Judith Kerr. Judith Kerr’s semi-autobiographical story of a family fleeing the Nazis in 1933.

* Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett. Elaborate mythological imagery and a background based in real science. If you like this, the Discworld series offers plenty more.

* The Story of Tracy Beaker by Jacqueline Wilson. The pinnacle of the wonderful Jacqueline Wilson’s brilliant and enormous output.

John Walsh, author and Independent columnist

* The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Irresistible puzzle-solving tales of the chilly Victorian master-sleuth and his dim medical sidekick.

* The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon. Age-transcending tale, both funny and sad.

* Mistress Masham’s Repose by TH White. Magical story of 10-year-old Maria, living in a derelict stately home, shy, lonely and under threat from both her governess and her rascally guardian.

* Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. Inexplicably evergreen, trend and taste-defying 1868 classic.

* How to be Topp by Geoffrey Willams and Ronald Searle. Side-splitting satire on skool, oiks, teechers, fules, bulies, swots.

* Stormbreaker by Anthony Horowitz. First of the action-packed adventures with 14-year-old Alex Rider.

* Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo. “Dulce et Decorum Est” for pre-teens.

* Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer. Lively, amoral, wildly imaginative debut (six more followed) about the money-grabbing master-criminal Artemis, 12. The author called it “Die Hard with fairies”.

* The Silver Sword by Ian Serraillier. Inspiring wartime story of the Balicki family in Warsaw.

* Animal Farm by George Orwell. Smart 11-year-olds won’t need any pre-knowledge of Marx, Lenin, Trotsky and 1917 to appreciate this brilliantly-told fable.

Michael Rosen

* Skellig by David Almond. Brings magical realism to working-class North-east England.

* Red Cherry Red by Jackie Kay. A book of poems that reaches deep into our hidden thoughts but also talks in a joyous voice exploring the everyday.

* Talkin Turkeys by Benjamin Zephaniah. A book of poems that demands to be read aloud, performed and thought about.

* Greek myths by Geraldine McCaughrean. Superheroes battle with demons, gods intervene in our pleasures and fears – a bit like the spectres in our minds going through daily life, really – beautifully retold here.

* People Might Hear You by Robin Klein. A profound, suspenseful story about sects, freedom and the rights of all young people – especially girls.

* Noughts and Crosses by Malory Blackman. A book that dared to go where no one thought you could with young audiences because it raises tough stuff to do with race.

* Einstein’s Underpants and How They Saved the World by Anthony McGowan. A crazy adventure set amongst the kids you don’t want to know but who this book makes you really, really care about.

* After the First Death by Robert Cormier. Cormier is never afraid of handling how the personal meets the political all within the framework of a thriller.

* The London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd. A book that allows difference to be part of the plot and not a point in itself.

* Beano Annual. A cornucopia of nutty, bad, silly ideas, tricks, situations and plots.

Top Ten Lists are fun.  What books would you recommend for a Year 7 child?

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Literacy | Leave a Comment »

Teacher Assistants Now Come in Human and Dog Variety

March 1, 2011

I love this story!  Like yesterdays post, education is at it’s best when interesting and unorthodox ideas are devised to help improve the standard of learning and teaching.  To get kids to read to dogs is just zany enough of an idea to work.  Who needs teachers when you can employ dogs to do the same job?

A “LISTENING” dog has become Staffordshire’s latest teaching assistant – so he can help children improve their reading skills.

Primary school-age pupils will be reading stories to Danny the greyhound to build their confidence and overcome their fears of reading aloud.

Staffordshire County Council is only the second local authority in England to trial the idea and was due to be enlisting the help of its new four-legged recruit today.

The mild-mannered pooch was going to be working with about 30 youngsters at a library in Tamworth.

If successful, the project could be rolled out to other libraries this autumn to benefit schoolchildren across the county.

Danny and his owner, Tony Nevett, are part of the Reading Education Assistance Dogs (READ) programme, which has already proved a huge hit in the U.S.

Tony said: “He loves being read to and loves people.

“He will just be laying there on the floor while children are reading to him.

“Some children even show him the pictures in the books. Danny doesn’t judge them and he doesn’t criticise.

“For children who don’t like standing up in class, it can be a real help.

“We’ve had some fantastic results.”

Therapy dogs are already used to help people recover from illnesses or to befriend the elderly, which is where the idea to use them to aid literacy skills came from.

“It’s called animal-assisted therapy,” said 50-year-old Tony, who is based in Northamptonshire and has a degree in this line of therapy.

“When people stroke a dog, it’s been proven to lower their blood pressure.

“One of the reasons we use a greyhound is their temperament. They don’t bark.

“They are also the only type of dog with one coat of hair, so they are less likely to trigger allergies.”

The listening dog sessions can work in a variety of ways.

Sixteen-month-old Danny might listen to a child read on a one-to-one basis, or work with youngsters in small groups.

Pupils with special needs, such as autism, can draw particular benefits from working with Danny, although Tony is quick to point out that any child can enjoy working with a dog.

The books can tie in with the reading schemes they are using at school.

Staffordshire is following the lead of Kent County Council, which piloted the READ programme last year.

The approach in Staffordshire is especially innovative, because it involves running the sessions in a library.

Councillor Pat Corfield, cabinet member for culture, communities and customers, said: “This may seem like a shaggy dog story, but it has a serious purpose.

“The idea is that children will lose their fear of reading aloud, because the dog is a non-judgmental, friendly audience.”

Despite only being a young dog himself, Danny already has a wealth of experience working with children.

He has a sideline as a ‘Blue Cross’ dog, where he goes into schools to help teach pupils about responsible pet ownership.

There’s an old joke often attributed to teachers that if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.  Seems that joke can be altered from peanuts to shank bones now.

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Teacher Assistant | 2 Comments »

We Can Do More!

December 20, 2010

Teaching boys especially, requires greater investment and further innovation on the part of the teacher.  Boys are falling way behind, and there is no point sitting on our hands.  We can’t let it get any worse.

According to figures obtained by the BBC’s Today programme, one in 11 boys begin secondary school with the reading skills of an average seven-year-old.

Educational experts point out that once children reach secondary school age, it can be very difficult for them to catch up to the reading levels of their peers.

Speaking to the BBC, education secretary Michael Gove said it is “unacceptable” that children leave primary school without adequate reading skills.

“We want to ensure that those schools where children are not being taught to read are tackled,” he stressed.

Teaching kids to read is a fundamental role of the Primary teacher.  Since I joined the blogosphere, I have encountered brilliant blogs from all around the world that has informed me, shared ideas and strategies and opened my eyes to new technologies to introduce to the classroom.  This kind of collaboration has such a profound effect on teaching and learning and has helped me become a better educator.

That’s why I think we can address issues such as those quoted above together.

Let’s work cooperatively in trying to improve literacy and numeracy, allow our students the opportunity to express themselves and think creatively and let us ensure that both girls and boys are achieving.


Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Literacy, Teaching boys | 2 Comments »

Newer Entries »