• this-wayCurrently, there is a lively debate about how children should learn to read. It seems to me that both sides of the debate share the same concern – they all agree that children should become fluent readers, able to both read and understand the written word.

    To me, the debate has come about through the misinterpretation of the word read.

    Those who teach the nuts and bolts of reading are rightly focussed on the decoding of words. This is the ground work of reading. At this stage the word reading is defined as decoding words.

    Later, those children move on to those who teach them to become fluent readers, to gain experience and understanding of the meaning of both words, groups of words and the hidden meanings between the lines.

    Fluency comes with practice. At this stage of building reading skills, the word reading is defined as understanding the meaning of words and the meaning of groups of words, generally referred to as text.

    It seems to me that these two definitions of the same word are the cause of the debate. It’s easy to mistake confusion for criticism. Perceived criticism usually leads to negative thoughts that soon become entrenched ideas and dogma.

    Learning to read is probably the hardest job anyone undertakes in their lives.

    Thank heavens there are dedicated foundation and early years teachers who love their jobs and the children they teach, who lavish time and energy, hearing readers in lunch breaks, tweaking and refining their methods for each individual in their care. They do not get enough praise. So, thank you all.

    And thank heavens for the dedicated remedial teachers who help those for whom the classroom hasn’t worked, who dedicate themselves to saving the ones who slip through the net.

    In any system there will be those for whom the structure, designed for the majority, will to be not suitable. Humans are individuals – one size will never fit all.

    These teachers probably get even less praise, as they do their crucial work in dark corners and cubby-holes around the school. Only they will ever know the effect they have on individual lives. So thank you too.

    Thank heavens also, there are dedicated teachers who want to build on the decoding skills learned by the children who move on up in school. They enthuse children to read on their own, to thrill to stories, to engage with facts and learn to learn for themselves. Thank you also for your hard work and dedication.

    There is a functional use for reading. We need to read road signs, bills, news, instructions, recipes, contracts etc.

    We don’t need to read Shakespeare, Hello Magazine, fairy stories or jokes.

    But we don’t give children books of recipes or instruction leaflets or tomes on contract law, because we know they are deadly boring. They are not going to enthuse children to read.

    That’s why we give children stories that take them away to other worlds, on wild adventures, to make them laugh, cry and scream with fear. Stories connect one mind to another directly. Stories teach empathy, history, bravery, the meaning of love, sacrifice, greed, jealousy, friendship… the meaning of words.

    Stories engage most children. Road signs, on the whole, do not.

    Fluency requires practice.

    A reader will not become a fluent reader without practice. It is the same when learning to play a violin or to kick a goal like Beckham. Practice means reading a lot, every day, just like a violinist practices every day, and the reason why Beckham could always be found practicing after everyone else had gone home.

    The wonder of stories is that when children get bitten by a story, they do not to want to stop reading. They have to know what happens next.

    And while they are finding out, they are practicing their reading skills… and they don’t even know it!

    They are learning about structure. They are seeing that stories really do have a beginning, middle and end. They are seeing the words they’ve learned to decode in context. They are seeing the same words used in different ways, with different meanings, learning empathy, learning that others may interpret the same words in a completely different way. This comes with fluency.

    Reading purely to decode is what machines do.

    My copy of Adobe Acrobat asks me if it would like to decode words it recognises on an image. It does a remarkably good job – better than a ten year old, probably.

    Machines decode for us more and more. Soon they will drive us, so we don’t need road signs anymore. They will sort out contracts and disputes for us. The barcode on the side of the ready meal will program the microwave to deliver a perfect meal every time, so we won’t even see the recipe.

    Academic, legal and technical writing is done by and for academics, lawyers and technicians. We pay them to mediate and elucidate. We don’t need to learn to decode that sort of text.

    So we are left with social media, an environment where you really need to understand the meaning of the millions of stories that flow through the ether, day in and day out.

    What better grounding than to be able to sound out and decoded those weird txt spellings and have all that practice, reading stories about fairies, aliens, talking animals and evil monsters?

  • teenager ?Every year I go to Monmouth Comprehensive School to try and give some advice to students about writing and illustrating as a possible career. There used to be a sort of career path I could suggest but, thanks to the Internet,  so much has changed in the last four or five years, I went last night wondering what to say.

    Every one who came to talk to me was different. Different aims, ideas and levels of ambition. I had different conversations all night, but themes did repeat themselves. Here are a few things I remember saying more than once.

    Do you want to be an artist or a craftsperson?

    There is a difference. An artist originates ideas, a craftsperson turns those ideas into a physical reality. Many Artists are experts in their craft, but not all craftspeople are Artists – they make beautiful art but not from their own, original brainwork. A craftsperson is more likely to get work in the artistic field, and many people are happy just to be able to be in the artistic world in any way they can.

    An Artist may well starve or they may become fabulously successful because they are originals and reap the reward.

    Be different.

    That’s easier said that done as a teenager. Standing out from the pack can bring unwanted attention. But if you want to be a successful artist you need to be different so that you reflect back the world so others see it in a way they have never seen before.

    To be successful you need to be recognisably different. Copy other people’s work as you learn, but always ask yourself, “What Have I learned from copying this? How do I bring these ideas into my own work and move these ideas forward into something new?”

    Draw.

    For illustration and other visual media, drawing is the core skill. By drawing every day, you build up a knowledge of how the world works and develop eye-brain-motor skills. It is simple you paper and pencil. There is nowhere to hide!

    When you want to make art, you don’t want to have to think about the process. You want to be able to concentrate on the image or the idea, not your lack of skills and understanding.

    Draw when you are at the bus stop, in cafes, out shopping, draw the dog, the cat, Grandad fast asleep in front of the TV.  You have no excuse to be bored. Pick a pencil and draw whatever is in front of  you. Keep drawing it until you get it right!

    Read.

    This goes without saying. Reading connects you straight to the mind of the author. Movies are a mediated interpretation. You learn a lot about how other people think by reading.

    Live.

    Just say yes to experiences that are offered to you. The more you say yes, the more seems to get offered. If something is a bit oiut of your comfort zone, try it any way. Push yourself a bit. You can only get new and original ideas if you have lived a bit and have some experience of life.

    X-Factor is not reality.

    The winners of reality shows have put years of practice and learning in before they ever apply to be on the shows. The TV doesn’t tell you that. TBV needs to sell you a fairy tale dream.

    Don’t be in a hurry.

    The plain fact is that you are still young and don’t have a huge amount of experience. That’s okay. You have a whole life-time in which to grow up! If you feel you want to be original but don’t have any good ideas, don’t worry, just keep working at it. Ideas come when you put different ideas and experiences together, so you have to have lots of small ideas and experiences in your storehouse before you can start to make the connections. Do stuff, build up your experience and increase your knowledge.

    Keep a journal or sketchbook.

    Journals and sketchbooks are like idea batteries you can go back to when you need recharging. This is where you will find your connections. If you don’t make a note of an idea, within seconds it will be lost forever.

    If you feel called, nothing will stop you!

    Art is a vocation. If you really want to be an artist, nothing will stop you. You may have to make some serious sacrifices along the way.

    A degree means nothing in the career of an Artist

    As an Artist you will be judged purely on the quality of your work. No one buys a painting because you have a degree. BUT! Art college or Uni gives you time to try things out and make mistakes under the tutelage of teachers who understand what kind of person you are. It also gives you time spent with other student artists. You will feed off them as much as they feed off you. Make use of this time. Art college or Uni should be fun but it should not be a three year party with no work! It is a fabulous opportunity to find out who you are and build the ground work of your original ideas.

    You may also decide at some point that you want to be an art historian or work in museums or galleries or go into some other artistic field where qualifications count. As you go through your artistic career you will become aware of jobs and fields of endeavour you never knew about before. One day you matt well find something and say, “This is me!” So be prepared and have some great qualifications to back you up, just in case.

    Choose the subjects that will obviously support your artistic path and then choose the subjects you enjoy and will do well in. Make sure you get the best grades you can, just in case you find yourself on a different path that needs the qualifications.

    Be lucky!

    There is no such thing as luck. Luck is making sure you are in the right place at the right time with the right people with the right knowledge and experience behind you.

     

    Any other advice you would like to add to this from bitter experience!?

  • power of booksThe older I get, the more I realise that there is never one simple easy answer. Duality or multiplicity is built into the fabric of life.

    Yin/Yang, Left/Right, Relativity/Quantum theory. All systems work happily enough, but each needs the other to make sense of the whole.

    So it is with learning to read.

    The mechanistic approach to reading of phonics is great – breaking down the language into its composite parts to create building blocks.

    I’m a great advocate of this axiomatic approach. Start with the very basic truth or fact about the subject that everyone can agree on, then build upon that foundation, step by step, block by block.

    You may have read my book, Euclid, the man who invented geometry. Euclid is the classic, axiomatic approach to learning geometry. But geometry is boring, boring, boring if you never have the chance to see the angles being created, or to stab yourself with a compass and bleed on your exercise book or feel the exhilaration of drawing a perfect circle. There has to be fun and there has to be a reason to it all.

    When it comes to reading, you can fill a child full of phonics, but you can’t make them read. Phonics won’t make them want to read. Phonics are mechanical, they have nothing to offer, no fun, no reason.

    Phonics only make sense in conjunction with stories. Stories are what captivate a child’s imagination, not phonics.

    Phonics are meaningless to a child unless they begin to see a connection between the mechanics and the prize. The prize is the story. Why else should they bother learning phonics?

    There are no more magical words to a child than, “Shall I tell you a story?” Say them and you’ll have their immediate and rapt attention. It’s an extraordinary power. You don’t even have to be good at telling stories, just choose a good book, open it and off you go. Trust the author and the editor who put their life’s experience into getting the story just right, so you can be a hero to the children you read to.

    This works with adults too. Try it!

    For every minute spent on phonics an equal minute needs to be spent on story time, otherwise phonics don’t make sense. Phonics and grammar and structure and spelling only make sense when you know what it is that they all add up to… the prize, the story.