Feature
Seizing the day
by Rebecca Macfie
Meeting school students’ health and literacy needs can have a remarkable “booster” effect.
Bleck. Greck. Preck. Dack. Skick.
Thirteen-year-old Adam Siepkes reads aloud from a column of nonsense words in a small, thick, red book. He’s practising short vowel sounds ending in “ck”. Linwood College literacy teacher Judy Hutchison utters gentle words of encouragement, and puts a stroke through a box alongside each word that Adam reads correctly.
Turning the page, he works through a series of nonsense sentences that enable him to practise some of the phonetic patterns he has been working with.
“Take the truck to the docks for a crate of fish, but do not bring back a haddock; Dash to the pitch to catch the hat before it gets too dark in the stand.”
A page further on, Adam encounters columns of real words ending in “y”. Hutchison reminds him that this can signify either an “i” sound at the end of a word, or an “e” sound. “Happy, hungry; spry, satisfy.” It looks as dull as ditch water, but Adam is focused and attentive. Toe by Toe is working well for him, he says.
Advocates of the “whole language” method of reading instruction – which emphasises the meaning and context of text and is the dominant reading philosophy in New Zealand schools – would be horrified at this phonetic dissection of words.
But the whole language method has largely failed Adam: he started high school this year with a reading age of about 10 – three years behind his chronological age. In his primary school years he went through early literacy intervention programme Reading Recovery, and after that his teachers led his parents, Robyn and John, to believe he was doing fine.
It wasn’t until this year, when he started as a Year 9 student at Linwood College, a decile 2 Christchurch school, that they were advised he needed help.
He was enrolled – along with about 40 others this year – in a highly structured, UK-designed phonics reading programme called Toe by Toe (see box page 26), and each day he spends about 15 minutes working with Hutchison through the little red book.
If Linwood’s experience with the programme over the last three years is any indication, within a few months Adam will probably be reading at around the level expected of someone his own age, if not better.
That was the experience of Simon Burgess and Brent (BJ) Cooper. They did Toe by Toe two years ago; both were assessed on entry to Year 9 at Linwood with reading ages of about 9½-10, and by the time they finished the programme a few months later they had progressed to 13-13½.
Simon recalls that he used to be “real bad” at reading; it was something to be suffered or avoided. Now he reads for pleasure – Stephen King is a favourite writer – and says his spoken language has improved, too.
“I used to say words like ‘bro’, but now I just try and speak normally.” Like BJ, he feels his school work across all subjects has improved as a result of learning to read properly.
For Adam, it’s not just Toe by Toe that is turning the key to learning. He has also had his eyesight tested and been prescribed and equipped – free of charge – with a pair of glasses, thanks to the school’s intervention. Neither he nor his parents had been aware he needed them.
Again, he’s in good company: in the past three years dozens of Linwood students have similarly discovered that they needed glasses and been kitted out with them. Many of them, like Year 12 students Cameron Scott and Clare Schultz, and Year 11 student Rebecca Carroll realised only after they were prescribed, how much they had been struggling to see.
Ryan Scott-Fellows and Johnny Tukuniu (Year 12) already had glasses, but when they were tested at school it was discovered their eyes had deteriorated and they needed stronger lenses.
Melanie Hunter, now in Year 11, had felt throughout her primary school years that something was wrong with her eyesight, but was told everything was fine. But when she was assessed after starting Year 9 at Linwood, she found she’d been right all along, and was prescribed coloured lenses to correct a condition that makes it difficult for her to read black print on a white page. She also struggled with reading, but caught up after going through Toe by Toe.
“I never used to get very good grades, but now I do. It’s really boosted me,” she says.
Often distracted in class during her primary school years, she now wonders – with an understandable hint of frustration – how much more progress she might have made if all this had been detected years ago.
Indirectly, all these students, and many others at Linwood, have former Christchurch mayor Garry Moore to thank. After his re-election in the 2004 local body elections, Moore issued a challenge to get all young people in the city literate and numerate, and everyone under 25 either in work, training or at school.
That seeded a major undertaking at Linwood, dubbed Lane (Literacy and Numeracy Empowerment), that has resulted in dozens of kids getting glasses, around 160 students receiving intensive reading tuition through Toe by Toe over the past three years, and others getting urgently needed dental and medical help.
It has also resulted in a substantial boost in students’ academic achievement.
Page 1 
