I have been watching the program ‘Gareth
Malone’s Extraordinary School For Boys’ on the ABC for the past few weeks. The
general idea of the show is that Gareth (a choirmaster) has been engaged for 1
term to try to boost literacy levels in a group of year 5/6(?) boys. He only works
with them 3 days a week and only works with the boys, not the girls (they work
with their normal classroom teachers).
The goal set for him is to improve the boys’
reading ages by at least 6 months in 1 term. A hard task when you see what some
of the boys are like.
I tuned in tonight to see the third part of
the 3 part series, only to find that the ABC has cut the third part in two and
the final is now next week! How am I meant to know if his methods work if I
have to keep waiting?!? I want to get on with building my classroom in the
woods, running through the local common and taking boys on the train to the
nearest major centre to use the library’s budget in one afternoon buying books
just to engage the boys!
I don’t think that his ideas won’t work, I
just think that even if they do work they are impractical to be replicated
especially in a normal school setting without large amounts of resources
available. I will reserve final judgement until I see some results from the
literacy assessment (hopefully) next week.
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