One of the best moments of my life…

posted in: Post-16 & Adult Literacy, Success Stories |

Recently, I received the immeasurable gift of chatting with a woman who’d come to That Reading Thing unable to read the word ‘is’. No one outside her immediate family knew her secret and, during her first TRT session, she wept just trying to articulate to her tutor that she couldn’t read or write. At Port Reach’s celebration evening, supported by her tutor, she stood in front of a roomful of people and told her story. By her own account, she … Read More

Where Reading Can Take You

posted in: Post-16 & Adult Literacy, Secondary literacy, Success Stories, Youth Offending |

A taste of what can happen in a That Reading Thing lesson The Deal in That Reading Thing is: “you never have to know anything we haven’t learned together”. The flip side of The Deal is that students do need to know what we have learned together – and the result is often higher expectation than our students have ever experienced before.  That high expectation is reflected in our choice of reading material. That Reading Thing intentionally tries to take … Read More

Literacy for Young Adults Part 2

posted in: Post-16 & Adult Literacy, Success Stories, Youth Work & Literacy |

NEWS: Due to recent discussion around the inclusion of phonics in adult literacy, I thought I’d better mention that all lessons in both Part 1 and Part 2 of Literacy for Young Adults are age-appropriate linguistic phonics. It’s not about c-a-t says cat! Community literacy, offered in an informal one-to-one setting, is a powerful tool for people who are wary of classrooms – and that includes many people who have tried and failed to learn to read and spell in … Read More

Literacy for Young Adults Part 1

posted in: Post-16 & Adult Literacy, Youth Work & Literacy |

NEWS: Due to recent discussion around the inclusion of phonics in adult literacy, I thought I’d better mention that all lessons in both Part 1 and Part 2 of Literacy for Young Adults are age-appropriate linguistic phonics. It’s not about c-a-t says cat! Community literacy, offered in an informal one-to-one setting, is a powerful tool for people who are wary of classrooms – and that includes many people who have tried and failed to learn to read and spell in … Read More

How to make phonics suitable for teens and adults

posted in: Post-16 & Adult Literacy, Secondary literacy, Thoughts on Education |

When people hear “phonics” they think “childish”, and not without reason. Most phonics programmes are childish, but not because they teach reading using the sounds and symbols of the language. They’re childish because they’re created for little children, emergent readers who have no history of trying and failing to learn to read. There are some wonderful programmes for little ones. The problem with using any teaching method intended for young children is that you automatically infantilise the learner no matter … Read More

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