Here’s
a great anecdote for anyone wondering if That Reading Thing works with
ESOL teens. I’ll pass over to the support worker in the high school who
is trained in TRT and started working with the nearly 13-year-old in the
autumn.
***
“I am delivering TRT to a child in year 8 who came over from Afghanistan in year 5 and had no English at all at that point. His
vocabulary was learnt from his peers as his parent speak 3 different
languages at home but they don’t include English! This child now speaks
in a very broken (slang) English. He had a reading age of 6 years and 11
months when I tested him. His spelling was equally as poor. I was
interested to see if TRT could help a child with English as an
additional language. I am aware that TRT works best when the person has
an already established vocabulary to work with, so this will be
interesting!
He would smile constantly in an effort to disguise
his confusion and then I realised that he did not have a clue as to
what the instructions were from the teacher, didn’t know that a door was
a door or a kettle was a kettle etc. Which also meant he did not know
the teachers’ names or who he could go to for help. During TRT time I
started to walk the corridors with him and point out names of people,
objects etc. We will soon be one term in. His teachers have noticed him
put his hand up more and become a ‘doer’ not a spectator. I will report
back with his next set of test results!
He goes to college on
Friday afternoons but said that he doesn’t get the same type of help as
he does with TRT. He would rather do more of this and give up college!”
****
Follow-up. After 4 months of That Reading Thing and relational support,
this boy had gained 13 months in reading and 21 months in spelling. We
get excited about those kinds of numbers in such a short time, but
what’s really thrilling is that he’s now a ‘doer’ rather than a
spectator in class.(As a little postscript, his father came to school to
see if his mum could get That Reading Thing too!)
This is why we’d like to see one trained That Reading Thing tutor in every school and family support group. It’s life-changing.
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