No Child Left Behind - Part 3
“Literate Reading - A Scheme That Promotes
Both Imagination and Literacy For Your 4-7 Year Old”
by Finn Clark-Brown

 

Imagination is at the heart of learning. One of the frequent reasons given for home educating children is that parents wish to preserve a child’s creativity and imagination.

The fact that the mind works by images and allegories has inspired imaginative and spiritual teachers from Plato and Aesop to modern visualization and mind-body healing techniques used in medicine. Einstein as a youth imagined the world from a light beam, and Jesus used analogies and parables to explain his teachings to his followers. Margaret Meek Spenser, after a lifetime of research into children reading, recently gave the keynote address at the World Conference on Reading and stated: “Imagination is at the heart of children learning to read.”

The majority of school reading schemes do not provoke the response I have seen in the children where imagination has been put at the heart of children learning to read. These reading schemes are typically based on producing readers that decipher text. Like preprocessed food, the words are fed to children as though words have no context, as though children have no imagination to provide meaning to these words. While phonics helps to sound out words, and must be taught, it does not provide the “heart of children learning to read”.

How do we provide that “heart” of reading so that children love and value reading books? To answer this question I will hold a free workshop on April 17, 2004, for home educators and teachers who wish to put imagination at the heart of their child learning to read. Should you wish to know more, the remainder of this article describes some of this process and its sequence. The method I am about to describe produced children who read significantly better on standardized tests in reading and phonics (in results from a comparative study).

1) a) Literacy is when children and adults engage the book; they bring their life to the text. We call this the intertext. In the intertext, like the movie The Neverending Story, we enter into a secret world, a kind of conspiracy. Readers become an ‘insider’ to what the writer is saying. Rosie’s Walk, Where the Wild Things Are, or The Jolly Postman, and books like them, burst with the fun of the intertext, and you will find yourself on an equal footing with your child in exploring these children’s stories, and will bubble with shared conversation. This intertextuality cannot be a feature of reading schemes that offer words only to reinforce lessons that are taught about reading, rather than lessons that are learned by reading. With this attitude to reading, children are ready for the next step.

b) Draw the child’s attention to text. Show them where you are reading. Also point out to them different words like “STOP”, the names of shops, the name of your street, and so on. Copy a few of these down and use them in a game, or create a picture that includes these names.

2) a) In the home, use or create an experience like making jelly together, going for a pony ride, etc. It should be an experience that generates new words and the learning of new vocabulary. Take a letter sized or larger sheet of paper and ask the child to give you a sentence. It must be their own sentence, and should be memorable of the shared experience. Immediately, write this down on a sheet of paper or board. Point out the words on the sheet as the child says them. With the count the words the child says and count the words you have printed. Leave this sheet in a visible position in the home and come back to it several times each day to keep it fresh in the child’s mind.

b) The next day print this sentence across the long side of a second sheet of paper and make a fold above the sentence so that it remains white when the child draws a picture of the experience above the fold. Encourage some detail in the drawing so that the child has created a reference point for the sentence. Repeat the reading of the sentence as you did the day before. Write the words of the sentence on separate pieces of paper. Make sure that the words are written the same size as below the picture. Remember to include the capital letter and full stop to be placed at the end. Use these words in different games to match to the words under the picture. These words can be kept in a word bank in a Ziploc bag.

3) a) When you have played with these words for a few days, find a new experience that is different to the first experience. Again develop vocabulary, and encourage, but don’t force your child to make a longer sentence. Go through all the steps again for the second sentence, but don’t forget to at least read the first sentence each day. Now you will have two sets of words in the Ziploc bag.

b) Play with the words you have and make new sentences. If for example you have the two sentences: “I ate jelly in the kitchen today.” and “Mum looked silly on the little pony.” Combine these words creatively e.g. “I ate the pony”, “the little pony ate jelly.”

4) After about four or five experiences the Ziploc bag will be full of words and it would help to look at a word folder that I have made that teaches children how to file the words they know. This file teaches various other skills, such as differentiating between “doing” and “naming” words, etc., as well as motivates a child in different ways to use and learn more words.

5) A phonics file works in parallel with this scheme, and I can show you how this works too.

6) Once the folder of words becomes full, children are given a dictionary in which these words are written. Daily writing by this stage is quite advanced, and the dictionary then becomes a tool for collecting further words and for spelling exercises.

Should you be interested in a fuller explanation, or should you wish to discuss implementing this method, please give me a call or email, and come to the free workshop I will be running on April 17, 2004.

Finn Clark-Brown is the principal of Innesence School. He is a recipient of a fellowship based at Oxford University on spirituality in education and is completing a doctoral thesis in education on the same topic. He runs workshops on reading and writing, particularly for those who home educate. He may be contacted at innesence@msn.com or (505) 455 0004.

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Screenwriting Conference in Santa Fe Boasts New Location,
Expanded Faculty

Screenwriters worldwide are getting ready to dig in for a great weekend of fun and instruction at The Sixth Annual Screenwriting Conference in Santa Fe (SCSFe 2004). Expanding to a new location – The Institute of American Indian Arts – was just the first step. Take a look at some of the expanded faculty for the screenwriting symposium as well as the producers seminar:

David Boxerbaum’s past history includes stints with Sony, Jerry Bruckheimer, and William Morris. Currently a literary agent with Metropolitan, he will be conducting several workshops at SCSFe 2004.

Jay Cocks has the screenwriting credit on the recent Martin Scorcese hit Gangs of New York, as well as the Academy Award nominee The Age of Innocence. As a new member of the symposium faculty, attendees will have the opportunity to attend his 9-hour class as well as a 90-minute workshop.

George Gallo’s screenwriting credits include Bad Boys, Midnight Run and The Whole Ten Yards. He will also mentor a 9-hour class and conduct a 90-minute workshop.

Wendell Wellman has written for Clint Eastwood, Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Roman Polanski and has recently published the how-to book, A Writer’s Roadmap. Also an accomplished actor, Wendell will be among the symposium faculty at SCSFe 2004.

Marilyn R. Atlas, a member of the National Association of Latino Producers, is currently developing several film/TV projects and will conduct three workshops at the conference. You may remember her recent sleeper hit, Real Women Have Curves, which she produced for HBO.

Early registration discounts available. Please call toll-free 1.866.424.1501 or visit the website – www.scsfe.com for more details.

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Kenny Boy

A city boy, Kenny, moved to the country and bought a donkey from an old farmer 

for $100.00. The farmer agreed to deliver the donkey the next day.

The next day the farmer drove up and said, "Sorry son, but I have some bad news, 

the donkey died."

Kenny replied, "Well then, just give me my money back."

The farmer said, "Can't do that. I went and spent it already." Kenny said, "OK 

then, just unload the donkey."

The farmer asked, "What ya goanna do with him?"

Kenny, "I'm going to raffle him off."

Farmer, " You can't raffle off a dead donkey!"

Kenny, "Sure I can. Watch me. I just won't tell anybody he is dead."

A month later the farmer met up with Kenny and asked, "What happened 

with that dead donkey?"

Kenny, "I raffled him off. I sold 500 tickets at two dollars a piece and made 

a profit of $898.00."

Farmer, "Didn't anyone complain?"

Kenny, " Just the guy who won. So I gave him his two dollars back."

Kenny grew up and eventually became the chairman of Enron