Thanks to John over at The Literacy Blog for his mention of ThatReadingThing.

We go back almost 13 years – all of those spent working on getting excellent reading help to those who need it.

I’ll be presenting a bit about TRT with Sarah Warburton of the Gap Project at Improving Literacy at Transfer Between Primary and Secondary Schools on July 7th, 2011 in London.

 

We’ve updated our look with a new WordPress theme, an updated RSS feed and a much more recent photo of me.

However, the new contact page seems to have a glitch so, if you tried to get in touch and didn’t get a response, please try again.

Tricia

The Teacher ~

When I referred M to TRT in September,  he lacked confidence in his abilities, was not keen on reading and had a fairly low level of literacy. Since then, he has made great progress both in the skills he has gained and in his attitude. He is engaging more, asking questions, bringing in papers from the mosque which interest him, reading complex texts, has taken a book home to read, comprehending what he is reading, responding to texts, has become more focused with greater stamina, is more punctual. He has reached Level 30.

The Youth Worker ~

I had my first meeting with a Year 10 young woman in a school last week.  When doing the assessments, she got to the fourth word (‘temp’) in Level 4 and got stuck.  By the end of the session, she was able to spell out the word ‘dentist’ and read the word ‘fantastic’ without any prompting from me.  The most amazingly rewarding part of this was the look on her face when she realised what progress she had made in such a short amount of time.  Words can’t describe it.  My interpretation – TRT Rocks!!!

The Academic ~

My calculations .. show that those 20 participants made an average gain of 19.6 months of reading age in just under 7 months, a ratio gain of 2.9. …..In sum, the scheme is meticulously organised and, faithfully delivered, is clearly capable of producing good or even excellent gains for most of the students involved.  – Greg Brooks, Emeritus professor of education, University of Sheffield, an honorary life member and past president of the UK Literacy

 

This wonderful article has nothing to do with literacy but everything to do with education.  I often wonder why the UK is so negative about education that isn’t academic, especially at the secondary level.  This article is about post-secondary education but many of the ideas apply to the level below.

This one line jumped out at me:

The well-founded pride of the tradesman is far from the gratuitous “self-esteem” that educators would impart to students, as though by magic.