About TRT
ThatReadingThing started as a grassroots response to a very local problem: I was meeting too many young people (mostly boys) who didn’t read well enough to gain a decent GCSE. Armed with a Secondary English teaching certificate and a BA in English Linguistics, I set out to learn how to teach a reluctant teenager to read.
After many dead ends, I found a book called Why Children Can’t Read by Dr. Diane McGuinness. I was instantly convinced by her idea that a system for learning to read a language must reflect that language’s writing system. Since we represent the sounds of our spoken language with one or more letters, it makes sense to teach reading on that basis. You can see a little bit more of how that works in the following pdf presentation.
Of course, a good method is only part of the solution. Most of our learners don’t think that education is for them. Because of that , I’m an advocate of learning situations with an element of relationship beyond the traditional pupil/teacher roles.
If you are interested in helping disaffected learners engage in the world of written language, then please get in touch. Here’s a pdf brochure with some more information about what we do.
Tricia Millar