May 1, 2020 11:49 am
Published by Alonah Reading Cambridge
If young Ben reads to you while you are preparing dinner and you hear a smart delivery with few hesitations and a confident, snappy pace you may assume your ten year old is a whizz. No problems, a star reader. But this could be a grave mistake and Ben may well be heading for big problems at secondary school because, in fact, Ben can barely read at all, he is illiterate. Today, there is very little formal reading carried out in schools. Occasionally, hesitant readers are given time out with a classroom assistant. But as there will probably be several remedial readers with a brief time slot and no more than a passing nod in the direction of phonics, these...
April 19, 2020 4:43 pm
Published by Alonah Reading Cambridge
Covid 19 has created a milestone in our history, and how will history itself report it in a hundred and fifty years? Deaths across the world have been on a biblical scale and sadly many of those have included the very people working to save the rest of us. Businesses have folded, jobs have been lost and we have even temporarily lost our freedom to roam at will. Society has been asked to step up to the plate and consider others and, by and large we have – we understand, we manage. Day by day we are proving that as a nation we are again capable of rallying cohesively for the greater good when our country calls. However, the children....
September 22, 2019 2:24 pm
Published by Alonah Reading Cambridge
Notwithstanding knee operations, a case of sepsis and a broken arm, I have, over the last few months, been following the education scene closely. We appear at this moment, more interested in issues not remotely connected to education its content and its standards. It is critical to remember children are children, their childhood is sacrosanct and their schooling must never be hijacked or impeded for adult causes. We are the ones who must fight world issues. A child’s place is in school learning and growing. Sadly the situation appears to be driven – if not specifically at least substantially by parents and politics rather than students’ needs to progress them through primary to secondary and then tertiary study. My working...
August 20, 2018 1:20 pm
Published by Alonah Reading Cambridge
On this occasion let me dispel some myths regarding tutors. Firstly that only the wealthy can afford them. Nonsense, for most of my sixty year career in tutoring I never charged a penny but succeeded in teaching, via the magical phonic sounds, numerous children to read. Secondly, that tutors are used mainly to advance bright children beyond their peer groups. This, you are asked to believe, is to enable those already achieving children to scoop prizes by enhancing their results and to win places at top sixth form colleges and Russell Group universities. Wrong! My tutoring over all these years has never included bright children wanting to be brighter. I have, however, had extremely clever children who have missed out...
May 2, 2018 4:15 pm
Published by Alonah Reading Cambridge
As a fairly firm traditionalist I rejoice in today’s acceptance, albeit grudgingly, that old methods do work. One of the most disturbing elements in the classroom over the past 50 years has been the arrangement of tables. In most cases up to ten children are sitting with their backs to the teacher. No eye contact and scant attention to a lesson unless the child opts to physically move his chair and tune in. Recent studies have proved that formal rows, with chalk and talk front of class teaching, produces formidably excellent results and is favoured by many successful schools. What is more these schools, frequently with a policy of strict discipline, can provide a quiet and structured atmosphere. This both...
July 24, 2017 3:47 pm
Published by Alonah Reading Cambridge
Stress. Pressure. No longer the effects of extreme and unbearable suffering like fire, flood and earthquake but reduced now to buzz words, cliches. Children are stressed, business men and women are pressured, teachers, doctors, shop assistants, holiday makers, models, dogs, cats and horses – all stressed. All under such demanding pressure they barely cope. And yet so many people endured two world wars, lived with the constant threat of bombs dropping on schools, homes and places of work. They fed their families on pitiful rations, scrimped for clothes, had inadequate heating and lived day after day with the news of the death of yet another family member or friend. Were they stressed? Were they pressured? Yes of course they were...
April 27, 2017 3:02 pm
Published by Alonah Reading Cambridge
Good news at last on the education front. The latest classroom development, announced by the Daily Mail of 15.04.2017, ‘Union members refuse to teach unruly pupils.’ For too many years teaching staff, inadequately equipped to deal with consistently recalcitrant children, have faced knives, abuse and standoffs from a spattering of young thugs. Again and again, day after day one child’s truculence has resulted in an entire lesson being disrupted or lost for the rest of the class. Quoting from the above article, ‘Some (teachers) are refusing to teach out-of-control pupils who have brought knives into school or threatened to set staff on fire and some as young as eight have been allowed to stay in lessons despite the risk they...
March 19, 2017 2:13 pm
Published by Alonah Reading Cambridge
Once again Grammar schools are on the agenda and once again, with the predicability of a snowflake melting in hot sun, all those dangerously divisive voices have been raised in protest. All I can say is that this country needs its brains and if your child has the chance to go to a Grammar it will be a golden opportunity to receive the best education leading to the finest opportunities life has to offer. Above all, Grammar school placings must be won on merit alone. My Primary school was tiny and many, many miles from the city. The parents were predominately dirt poor farm workers, the school library a shelf of very old books and attendance random at best. The...
February 20, 2017 4:44 pm
Published by Alonah Reading Cambridge
Recently it was reported that parents are going back to school, not to begin or complete degrees, but for an even better reason. They want to catch up with their children. Education has changed, it has leapt forward dramatically in an effort to repair the damage of past years. During those years I taught English to Italian and Spanish teenagers who could spot an adverbial, define a gerund, write a perfect complex sentence and parse it with ease. Their knowledge of our language was astounding while our teenagers had barely progressed beyond the very basic nouns and verbs. As we move forward to catch up, parents are feeling left behind. Well done those mums and dads who, instead of complaining...
January 20, 2017 10:24 am
Published by Alonah Reading Cambridge
Time gentlemen please! No, I’m not referring to pub closing but, more accurately, to the closing of the school time table. Schools were actively teaching small groups of children in Greek and Roman days, but schools, as we know them, date from around the 16th century. From earliest times the basic idea has been to educate children in the 3Rs – Reading, Writing and Arithmetic. Today we can look back on vast numbers of architects,scientist, judges, poets, mathematicians, and all the great and wonderful thinkers who have emerged to lead the world, all educated under the 3R system. It has worked extraordinarily well, until now. More and more frequently strident pressure groups are demanding their own politics du jour become...
