If at first you don’t succeed …

As the end of the academic year approaches, parents were invited to the school to have a look through their childrens’ workbooks and see how they’ve been getting on. It wasn’t a “sit down and have a chat with teacher” type of visit. Just to have a flick through the various books and journals into which they have been pouring their newly found knowledge into, in their own words.

I use the phrase “in their own words” literally and, for the benefit of anyone new stopping by to read these pages, I will quickly explain. The school that Joseph attends teaches basic reading and writing phonetically through a system called “Jolly Phonics”. Basically it gives them an understanding of words as they sound, not necessarily how they are spelt. With this in mind, when they arrive back in class on a Monday morning, Joseph (and his classmates) are encouraged to write about an experience; either something they did, somewhere they went or just something memorable from their weekend. Reading this made me smile and a bit choked, all at the same time. I pictured him sat there, looking slightly off page as he said the words over and over in his mind, trying to picture the letter which best matched the words he wanted to say.

For your information, “chrans foma” is Transformer.

Also note that the teacher hasn’t corrected his attempts. No big cross on the paper; just an encouragement to write a little more.

Wonderful!