Come And Turn The Page

          My cousin, Alan Hess and I recently made an appearance at

Stories for Learning: Art work copyright Andrew Price

the On-Line Edinburgh eBook Festival, now in its final weekend.
          We did a presentation about the bee in our bonnet, Functional Grammar, and how it can help children - and older people - improve their reading and writing skills.
          Click on the links below for an explanation and a demo of what we're working on.
           This is a prototype, so when you click on the link, it may take a few seconds for the programme to assemble itself into a 'book'.
          When it does - and it will take seconds - you'll be able to get a better idea of what we're aiming at, and how it will work. You'll be able to use the tools, and get a better idea of how this might work in a classroom.
          Note: the 'little lego brick icons' mentioned in part one are along the top of the page.
          Clicking on a link opens a new window.
 

Art work: copyright Andrew Price

Click here for Part One

          In Part Two, do have a play with the 'hot potato' games, and the 'rewrite the text tool.' This part ends with links to videos explaining things in a little more detail. 

 Click here for Part Two

          Alan has recently programmed an edit tool which allows anyone to take any text and quickly insert the HTML codes to make these games work. It's brilliant.

Here, for completion, is a link to Dr. David Rose, of Sydney University, speaking on his reading strategy, 'Reading to Learn.'

Scherherazade: Saving lives by telling stories

 All Art work: copyright Andrew Price.
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The Little Bad Wolf and the Big Chocolate Cake

David Rose

          Last week I was talking about the importance of story-telling  to literacy.

          But more formal lessons are important too. This link will take you to David Rose’s site, where he explains some of the techniques he’s used, in Australia, to ‘accelerate learning’ across all backgrounds and ages.

          First, the teacher prepares a text.

          This means choosing a text which interests and engages the students and reading it with them. Terms new to the students are explained, and any background or context needed is also supplied. For instance, a wolf may be big and bad, but what is a wolf anyway? Students may never have heard of one before. (My aunt taught Black Country children of primary age who didn’t know what a cow was. They knew only one word for any kind of four-legged animal: ‘dog.’ I wish I could believe this would be impossible now, but I fear it's not.)

Not a dog. Pig fancier.

          After preparing the text comes a detailed reading of it. The teacher gives students a lot of help in identifying words and groups of words.
           For instance, say the class are studying the story of the three little pigs. The teacher might say: 'Let's look at the title first. That's this line at the top. It tells you what the story's about. It says, 'The Three Little Pigs.' Who can find the word 'pigs'?
     "Yes! That's right. It's the word at the end. Let's highlight it.
      "What kind of pigs are they?
     "Right! Excellent! They are little pigs. Can we find the word that says 'little?' Great! - let's highlight that one too.'
          And so on. Lots of looking at the text, lots of praise, lots of repetition of a fairly simple task. But the repetition is driving the lesson home. If you repeatedly search for and look at something, you are going to remember it. The students are being 'laddered' to improved reading. You don't leap from the ground to the roof of your house in one mighty bound - but you can climb up there, one rung at a time, on a ladder. And you're more likely to keep climbing if, at every step, you're given reason to feel pleased with yourself.

The late Michel Thomas

          This has a lot in common with Michel Thomas' method of teaching language. Thomas insisted that the student should be completely relaxed and stress-free. They should not attempt to remember what they were being taught, or do homework. It was the teacher's responsibility, Thomas said, to structure the lessons in such a way that the student learned. Any kind of stress or anxiety, he believed, makes learning harder. Haven't we all experienced that? I know that I can type fast and accurately if I'm alone, but if someone's watching me, I might as well be typing in mittens

          Above, I've used 'Three Little Pigs' as an example, and assumed that the children are quite young.  A considerably more difficult text might be used with teenagers, one far beyond their reading-age, but not beyond their comprehension, if all the references, metaphors and irony are explained.
          (Older, well-read people tend to forget, I think, about the perfectly natural gaps in the knowledge of younger folk.)

          Students highlight words and word-groups. My cousin asks his students to identify ‘Who or What’ words in red, ‘Process’ words in green, and ‘Circumstance’ words in blue.

Once upon a time there were three little pigs.

                  The little red hen and her three chicks baked a cake.

(Not having studied with Alan, I may not have this quite right, but you get the idea.)
          Students would be given detailed help with each of the above sentences. 'Now this sentence says that the little red hen and her three little chicks baked a cake. What's a cake? How do you bake one, do you know? (Either the students or the teacher explain these things.)
          'Now, what was it they baked? Yes, a cake! Can you find the word, 'cake' right at the end of the sentence? Can you find 'a cake'? Very good! Let's highlight that in red.'

          Once students are more familiar with the text, the sentences are taken apart and played with. Words are cut out, moved around, and used to make new sentences – either on pieces of paper or a computer screen. The students are spared the chore of writing and can concentrate on the words.

          Once upon a time there were three little pigs and three big wolves.

          The little red hen and her three fluffy chicks baked a big chocolate cake with chocolate icing.

          You can mix it up.

           Once upon a time there were three fluffy big wolves who baked a little chocolate hen.

 

          My cousin tells me that his students enormously enjoy this, producing long, long sentences. The pigs can be little and pink and dirty, the wolves can be big and grey and hairy and fanged. The cake can have chocolate icing, and sprinkles, and candles, and cream and a red bow. Without realising it, by simple repetition and gentle correction, the students are learning how language bolts together. The little red hen can become a giant blue hen, or an enormous green cat. The chicks can be yellow as well as fluffy, and there can be three of them or three thousand.

           Sentences can be turned round. A tasty chocolate cake was baked by three little chicks and a little red hen. There were three little pigs once upon a time.
          Sentences can be formed by words on a card (or by dragging words about on a computer screen.
          The farmer rides his horse.
          The horse rides his farmer.
         Such reversals cause great amusement - these games are fun!
          The cards might have folding sections - or if the computer might offer a choice of other phrasings. You can then unfold a section - or drag in a phrase - to make:
          The horse was ridden by the farmer
           The farmer was riding his horse.
           The more I learn about these methods, the more I learn how complex and demanding devising suitable teaching materials is - but with this approach, the onus is on the teacher to make learning easy and relaxed for the student. And it works!

           Spelling is tackled by being broken into ‘startings’ and ‘endings.’

          So you can take the starting, ‘str –‘ and add -eet, -ing, -ap, -ong.

         To the starting 'ch', using cards or computer, you can add - ick, -urch, -um, -ap, -ina, -ip.
          The teacher draws attention to these 'startings' and 'endings' repeatedly. Repeatedly. Drip, drip, drip. It's the teacher's job to take the trouble, not the student's job to memorise by rote.
          The colour-coding and the use of images and games where words are moved to match the pictures exploit the fact that our memories are far more visual than verbal.
  

          Once the students can all read the passage fluently and understand it, they move on to writing.

          They are set the task of writing a passage closely based on the one they’ve studied in such detail. Notes are made on the board, and the students collaborate, supporting each other, and being supported by the teacher.
          They discuss the purpose of their writing - remember, reading and writing are social activities. Is the purpose of their piece to instruct, to pass on factual information, or to describe atmosphere or feelings?

          Using the notes, and working together, the students write their own version of the text.

          Next they move on to individual writing. Working alone, they write their own version of the text they’ve worked on as a group. Stronger students may move to this stage earlier, while the teacher continues to help the weaker ones.

          The final stage is Independent Writing. Here each student is set the task of writing a new passage, but one similar to that they’ve been working on - that is, a series of instructions or a description. They will use many of the words and phrases they have learned during the previous stages.

          The students then move on to a new text, and the cycle above is repeated. Of course, many of the words and phrases they’ve already learned will be used in the new text, and the students’ knowledge will be reinforced. Their confidence will increase as they encounter words and phrases they recognise.

Alan Hess

          This method has been found highly effective in both Canada and Australia – and my cousin, Alan Hess, has seen for himself, over the last four years, what an improvement can be made in the standards of both literacy in students’ own language and the speaking and understanding of a foreign language.

          In a relatively short time, it ‘ladders’ children up from having weak language and literacy skills to a point where they can ‘read to learn’ with confidence.

           And also read for pleasure, of course. What writer could fail to be enthused by the idea of a growing market of eager readers?

          Just for interest, here's a link to a fascinating Horizon programme about Michel Thomas and his teaching methods.

          This week Blott is in memory of Alan George Price, 1928-2008.

 

The Importance of Story

          Okay, Christmas is over. Frivol is over. I want to return to the subject I was talking about before the mince-pies.

          Let’s be clear about one thing. Learning to read is hard.

          I remember a friend, a very educated woman, talking about a branch of her family that she obviously didn’t waste much love on. She’d heard that a distant twig of this branch had become a teacher. “It’s the first I knew that they could read!” she said.

          I’ve heard lots of variants on this joke. The subtext is: reading is easy, it’s kid’s stuff, something everyone can do. Therefore, if you can’t read, you’re stupid. I used to be a volunteer tutor at an Adult Literacy class, and I know how much this sneer hurts adults who find reading difficult.

          And it’s based on a fallacy. Reading is very, very hard.

          When someone immediately reads a sentence they’ve never seen before, they are, almost instantaneously, cracking a complex code, and converting shapes into sounds.

          A musician who sight-reads music is rightly admired, but someone who sight-reads a sentence is doing something only slightly less difficult.

          Because it’s a relatively common skill doesn’t make it easy. Driving averagely well is also a common skill, but no one assumes that’s it’s a doddle to learn or that it’s ’kids’stuff.’

          I’ve read that it takes about eight years to learn to read fluently. Because those of us who master the skill usually start very young, we tend not to remember its many difficulties.

          Those who don’t learn so quickly enter secondary school with a low reading age, and education for them becomes a worsening struggle. They’re made to feel failures, even if they are not told so outright. Hence the acute embarrassment often felt by my friends in the Adult Literacy Class.

          Our education system expects children to enter secondary school with a reading-age matching their chronological age, and, in secondary school you don’t ‘learn to read,’ you ‘read to learn.’

          If you can’t read, your formal education more or less comes to a halt. Schools become Aversion Therapy Units, putting children off education for life.

Brunel

          I have always revelled in the knowledge that if something interests me – Neanderthals, say, or brochs or rievers – ‘there’ll be a book on it.’ If I hadn’t been one of the lucky ones who went through school with a high reading age, I probably wouldn’t even have heard of most of the things that interest me. And though I haven’t done much with my fluent reading, how can we ever know what potential is being lost in the thousands of children we fail to teach to read fluently? How many mute inglorious Miltons and potential Brunels are we throwing away? It’s a huge waste and a national shame.

          Before Christmas, I was blogging about some of the teaching methods being developed, based on Michael Halliday’s theories. These methods aim to bridge the skill-gap between children who start school with thousands of hours of experience with books and language, and those children who start with much less. (To read the earlier blogs on this subject, go here.)

          One way is for schools to provide the experience that might be lacking at home. Instead of being constantly tested and graded, children should be read to, and told stories. Poems should be learned, songs sung.

          I’ve heard adults say children ‘waste their time in school. They only listen to stories.’

          Hearing stories is not a waste of time. Stories have, for millennia taught communication. They enlarge vocabulary and range of expression. A child who learns how to structure a fairy-story will understand better, years later, how to structure an essay – and even, how to order their own thoughts to make better decisions.

          And all this story-telling and poetry listening should be as pleasurable as possible – because, if it isn’t, then the children switch off their brains, and you’re wasting your time and breath.

          Indeed, that’s one of the reasons that story-telling has been used, for millennia, as a teaching aid – to gain attention, to hold attention, and to be memorable. (The Good Samaritan, for instance, The Ant and the Grasshopper – even The Little Engine Who Could.)

          I quote the Ontario Ministery of Education (these methods have been successful in Canada.) ‘Becoming a reader is a continuous process that begins with the development of oral language skills and leads, over time, to independent reading. Oral language – the ability to speak and listen – is a vital foundation for reading success.’ 

Illustration: Kai Nielsen

        And where that foundation hasn’t been provided at home, the school must provide it. Tell them stories! The Brothers Grimm, The Little Red Hen, The Gingerbread Man. That masterpiece of suspense, The Billy Goats Gruff.

          This is not ‘just play.’ This is not ‘wasting time.’ The frequent hearing and discussion of these old stories extends vocabulary, and demonstrates a whole spectrum of possible emotions and responses, from grief to gratitude, from rage to forgiveness, from fortitude and determination, to despair, to devotion. They teach pronunciation, rhythm, alliteration – and various modes of speech, from the everyday to the archaic and formal. Stories do all this, and more, and they do it pleasurably, so that children beg for more.

          Gradgrind was, as Dickens pointed out, wrong. Stories are not mere entertainment, they are not a waste of time.

          Story-telling is the seed-bed of eloquence and literacy.

          And here's Blott in 'Twelfth Night.'