The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #145716 Message #3563319
Posted By: Noreen
01-Oct-13 - 02:29 PM
Thread Name: BS: Getting well in Guam
Subject: RE: BS: Getting well in Guam
Very interesting to catch up with you, Brett.
Your current situation reminds me of when I was in my first year of teaching, with a group of 'slow readers' (10 and 11 yr olds) in Darkest Salford a good few years ago. They had the same attitude as your group about the incomprehensibility of reading a whole book.
After teaching them for over a term, and sending a reading book home with them regularly then expecting them to return it to be changed, one of the lads asked me why they took reading books home.
This totally stumped me... my experience was of sending a book home with a child whose parents/older sibling/ grandparent would hear them read.
I hadn't ever thought to explain this to the children- and this boy (and possibly others) had gone through his whole primary school life, taking a book home, and bringing it back- or more often, losing it and getting into trouble for not bringing it back, and wondering why!
There was probably no-one at home who would support him- most of these children would not have a book at home, and possibly no-one at home who could even read themselves.
And we were expected to achieve the same targets with these pupils, as those from leafy suburbs with supportive parents who read with their child from when they were a babe in arms...
Keep positive!