- guardian.co.uk,
- Tuesday May 11 1999 17:50 BST
Nigel West is learning support coordinator at Hartshill GM Technology College, which serves a disadvantaged area on the outskirts of Nuneaton. Thirty per cent of its pupils enter with a reading deficit of one to two years.
One thing disaffected kids often can't do is sit and write as fast as others. So with the eight computers in our learning support room we teach them typing skills; it sounds very mundane but it gets them away from worrying about what they're doing with their hands so they can focus on their work. They also get a real glow from it, and that motivation transfers into other work.
Our electronic library and comprehension course from Carron Practicals includes about 150 graded books. The kids can prepare their reading on the computer, hitting a key, for instance, to hear a word read back to them. It helps them read on their own and builds up their confidence. I expect to get around one year's progress in six months.
The comprehension course, used for year nine and above, starts with basic questions and gets increasingly difficult. A child with an apparent reading age of 10 can deal with writing for someone older because they can prepare it beforehand.
Dyslexic children often find it difficult to get information into order, so we also set up style sheets for things like science experiments. This lets them focus on the science as opposed to the presentation, and means you get kids writing 16 or 17 lines in a lesson instead of three or four.
