The First Steps

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Dear Kay,

Getting to Know Your Student

You have now made the acquaintance of your student and made an informal assessment of his skills and his ability. The most valuable asset he can have is confidence and it is up to you to build it and sustain it. You are his very own friend and nothing he can do is too little to be praised and cherished. There is absolutely nothing that is more discouraging than for you to register the "raised eyebrows" response, which says, more clearly than words, "Goodness, is that all you can do!" Your student may not be able to read print but he can certainly read body language: lean towards him a little, look pleased and interested. Don’t fold your arms - that’s shutting him out.

A Little About Planning

After all these do’s and don’ts, what do you focus on to teach him? The motto is "Repetition with variety," and you need to have a balanced plan for your evening’s work. It doesn’t matter very much in what order you use them but you need to include the following areas.

Talk is Good

Talk - by you if your student is shy but hopefully more and more, by him. Topics are the universal, home and family, work, friends, and pastimes. "What did you do last weekend?" is a good starter. Tell him what you did.

Reading Aloud

Reading aloud. Anything at all that is of interest to him: football, pop music, holidays, hobbies. There is no law requiring him to read absolutely every word. If he comes to a word he doesn’t know, encourage him to work it out by the meaning of the sentence or illustrations if there are any. If he says, "that’s guessing!" as if that is wrong then say, "We aim to make you a good guesser".

Meaning and memory are so intimately linked that a new word may be remembered without any reinforcement. To test this, at the end of the reading recall the word and ask if he can find it. If he can, then that means he has acquired (for the moment at least) a memory of its appearance. That’s progress.

Using the Coffee Break

By this time the coffee break will be due. Sit with him and take part in the conversation. If he does, then fine, if not then he will in time.

Forming Letter Shapes

After the coffee break then comes the work! Remember my message in the first letter of this series? Speech and print are linked by the muscle-memory formed by writing. And "Detailed study of the letter-shapes facilitates the rapid recognition of those letters in reading." You have seen something of your student's writing ability, if only his name and address. Tell him you are going to teach him a game in which he will give you instructions.

Take a piece of paper, at least A5 but bigger if possible, and a thick pencil or marker. Choose a letter - ‘e’ is a good one as it is the most frequent. Tell him, "I’m going to make an ‘e’ as big as this piece of paper - but you must tell me how". He will be confused at first, so say, "Where do I start?" He may try to guide your hand. Resist this. Insist that he tell you exactly where to start. "In the middle? Here?" "No, then where? To the side? Left or right?" Insist on the words even if you have to say them and get him to repeat them. For ‘e’ the final form will end up something like this: "Start in the middle on the left-hand side, go across and up, then round to the left and nearly all the way round."

Then let him make the shape on another piece of paper, reciting the words as he does so. You will have explained to him, as I have explained to you, why we do this. Let him repeat the drawing, going over it in different colours and finally, simply tracing it on the table-top or in the air - at the full stretch of his arm if you can persuade him to do so, by example is best.

Don’t be bothered if you have never heard of this method, it is exclusive to Amity and it works. To finish off the evening, get him to think of words with an ‘e’ in them and help him write them. And tell him how well he’s done.

You may find that your own control of basic letter shapes needs some practice. We can give you a hand-out that reminds you which way to go round when forming the letters. That’s important as it leads on to joined-up writing, of which more later.

Let me know if this is either too baffling or too basic for you and your student. For the moment I am assuming he is an absolute beginner but quite often that is not so - there is knowledge but there are gaps, which we need to fill. Let me know what helps and what you need. I shall be at the Club one day soon and hope to give you demonstrations and help on the spot.

Gladys Glascoe