Feature:
Our World: Voice from children in the inner city
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The names have been changed to protect the identity of the children.
Sami, aged 5 years
Sami was referred to Springboard in September 2007 when he was in Year 1, aged 5 years, 5 months. An initial assessment showed that he only knew the letter sound and formation for “s” and had no idea at all about beginning or end sounds. He started working with his tutor on 10 single sounds. Springboard met Dad in February 2008 when he said how concerned he was about Sami’s spelling: his writing in class was just letter strings with no recognisable words. Dad admitted that he found it hard to help as he was unsure what to do and Mum was coping with severe mental health problems. At this stage, Dad was encouraged to engage him with books and to get him to add more details to his drawings as they were quite underdeveloped. By April 2008, Sami was writing three letter words with “a” and beginning to use them in simple sentences. His tutor noticed that he loved rhyme and was brilliant at generating rhyming words especially nonsense words! He clearly had good phonological awareness and this together with his enthusiasm helped him move through the SoundWorks programme quite quickly so that by the end of that first year he could write words with “a”, “i” and “o” and even some with beginning blends e.g flap, trip. Most importantly, he had started to read structured reading scheme books and was really gaining confidence and taking pride in his achievements, often wanting to photocopy the book to take home. His reading age and spelling age had both increased and were much closer to his chronological age.
During Year 2, Sami continued coming to Springboard working through SoundWorks with the same volunteer tutor. He has made excellent progress, especially in reading, using his phonic skills very well to read unfamiliar words. His class teacher has been able to move him up an ability group which was great for his confidence. He still finds creative writing a challenge; he has ideas but finds it so hard to organise and express them. On occasions, he can be quite naughty about writing and, when given cartoon pictures and speech bubbles to talk about and then fill in, he wrote “I don’t want that!” next to a girl opening a birthday present and “Ha ha!” next to the boy who sat on a drawing pin. Sami certainly has lots of personality and a wicked little smile! And at least he is writing!
Colin, aged 7 years
Colin was referred to Springboard as little progress was being made despite him knowing all initial sounds. His class teacher predicted he would make no progress in his acquisition of literacy skills if he did not have additional help. Colin started Springboard tuition in September 2008 when he was 7 years old. Initial assessments revealed he had a reading age equivalent to a 5 year old and a spelling age of a 6 year old.
During one academic year Colin’s reading has improved by 2 years and his spelling is steadily improving. He has benefited greatly from having some extra time and one to one tuition. His confidence in reading has improved and in conversation he is now willing to contribute to discussions. It was helpful for him to have a male tutor. We generally have a conversation about the week’s football, to which he responds enthusiastically. We then try to introduce a football theme into his work and we have several competitive games that he loves to play.
There are parental literacy problems at home but Colin has overcome this lack of assistance by becoming proficient at reading all football related themes on Teletext. His mother has been encouraged to get his books out and read with him. She is very happy at his progress and has been informed by his form teacher that he started the year 18 months behind and is now on track to catch up.
Shanice, aged 7 years
Shanice first began coming to Springboard for Children in March 2007, following concerns about her abilities in all areas of literacy. She is now 7 years 10 months old and English is her first language. Her reading age is 5 yrs 11 months and her spelling age is 6 years 9 months.
Shanice’s mood can vary from lesson to lesson. This behaviour is mirrored in the classroom and is associated with difficult home circumstances. However, despite a couple of difficult lessons where she has appeared withdrawn and has been upset when work has felt too hard, on the whole she is a happy little girl who seems to value highly the time and attention that she receives in the peaceful Springboard environment.
Shanice loves to draw and so we take every opportunity to illustrate work and draw picture clues to help her to remember key words. This is an area that helps to develop her confidence, which is essential when she struggles so much with all aspects of her literacy work.
At the beginning of each term, we assess children’s progress by encouraging them to produce a piece of unaided writing about their holidays or another subject of choice. At the beginning of the year, Shanice’s confidence was so low that she daren’t even put pencil to paper. However, by the beginning of the Spring term, she absolutely loved the opportunity to write and managed nearly half a page of full sentences. She was very excited to have written so much and it was an absolute joy to see her confidence really beginning to increase.
Being able to read a complete book has also been a massive boost for Shanice and she now often asks to finish her lessons by reading together on the carpet. Although this is still difficult for her, she is able to trust that she will be encouraged and supported, which seems to make a huge difference to her comfort and attitude towards her work.
Despite still being behind her peers in a number of aspects, the belief that she can achieve highly when she comes to her Springboard lessons means that school is not always a struggle, and hopefully in time she will be able to achieve more and more in the classroom as well.