Strollerderby : learning to read

Back to the Third Grade for This 71-Year-Old

JeanneSager — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 16:26:00 GMT

He stands more than a head taller than his classmates, but what really makes Alferd Williams stand out as a member of the third grade at Edison Elementary School is his age. He's seventy-one.

The son of a sharecropper, Williams headed to elementary school two years ago when he was sixty-eight. He started back in first grade, the last grade he attended before dropping out as a child in Missouri to help his family make a living.

He promised his mother then that one day he would learn to read. At sixty-eight, he found a teacher in Alesia Hamilton, a first grade teacher at Edison Elementary. Hamilton was uneasy, but she started teaching Alferd during summer school and when the school year began invited him into the classroom in the mornings to help out as a volunteer and read with the kids. She made the rounds with Alferd of talk shows (including Ellen, which helped launch a Website to help Williams build a house) noting he was a model student.

Two years later, he still is. Williams made a presentation to the kids in his school recently, explaining to them, “I don’t have a mother living, and I don’t have a father living, so it’s up to me how long I go to school and how well I learn.”

I confess I got a little weepy with this one and grateful that I can indulge in a good book to destress at the end of the day. Feel lucky you're reading this right now. Recent statistics released by the U.S. Education Department showed one in seven adults in American lack basic prose literacy skills. There are thirty-two million people like Alferd out there, all shining examples to our kids of how bad it can be - not able to read a newspaper, a blog or the back of a box of cereal.

Maybe we need an Alferd at every school in America. Can he take this show on the road; speak with kids who are pondering dropping out? He's got just the message every kid needs to hear - stay in school or spend your "retirement" back in the third grade.

Image: KC Star

How Do You Spell 'Burberry'?

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 23:30:00 GMT

It’s so much fun to hear language be manhandled by kids who are highly verbal but still preliterate. Their untrained ears find hilarious and creative sounds in words that we adults have memorized too well to really hear anymore.

When I was little, I used to think that the word “reconnoiter” was actually a phrase: wreck and order. Whenever my mom suggested that we reconnoiter a beach or a park, I thought we were going to trash the joint and then clean up after ourselves—which is, actually, pretty much what we did.

A four-year-old featured on today’s Kids Say the Cutest Things had a very sophisticated linguistic misunderstanding about her stuffed animal. Here’s how her mom or dad explained it: “My daughter has a bear that has a Burberry pattern scarf. The lady at the portrait studio asked what her bear was called and my 4 year old responded, ‘His name is BurBear, but I don't know what his last name is. It's starts with an E.’”

It makes so much sense that a four-year-old heard the “bear” in Burberry, while we adults only hear the cha-ching of the cash register.

Photo: http://myviewsmyideas-rubal.blogspot.com

Learning to Read through Video Games

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 22:30:00 GMT

Increasingly, books for children and young adults are being released with related video games. Since 97 percent of children ages 12 to 17 play computer and video games, this seems like a surefire to draw at least some reluctant readers into books. But when libraries host gaming tournaments and elementary schools incorporate video games into English lessons, you have to wonder, “Is this still reading?”

A large number of writers, publicists, and educators believe it is—and that, in the age of digital media, computer skills may be more important than proficiency with print media.

PJ Haarsma is a former advertising consultant who now designs online games about his science fiction novels for preteens. He argues that pairing video games with young adult literature “brings the book into their world, as opposed to going the other way around.”

But, as I pointed out in my tribute to Roald Dahl, the mark of a good book is precisely the ability to get lost in it, to live inside a world of which one has no experiential knowledge. This is particularly important for children, who largely learn empathy, respect for the imagination, and the value of introspection through reading. When one is being tested about a book’s plot in order to advance in a video game, the quiet, self-forgetful pleasure of being lost in a good book gets obliterated completely. Children learn that the only character who matters is the one holding the controller.

Photo: New York Times

Banned Books Week

Strollerderby : learning to read

Back to the Third Grade for This 71-Year-Old

Judge: Home-Schooled Kids Must Go to Public School

Should Schools Separate Non-English Speaking Kids?

School Yanks Teachers' Coffee Pots to Save Money

How Do You Spell 'Burberry'?

Learning to Read through Video Games