CHAPTER 6 HISTORY OF THE PROGRAM
How it all started
The material in this book was all developed many years ago when my children were small, and I was teaching five year old children to read and planning to do a major research project for a master’s degree.
I decided to research what was of utmost interest to me at that time - how could I best assist my own daughters’ development and learning.
At that time it was strongly considered by the vast majority of teachers that parents should not interfere in any way in the important parts of a child’s education, such as teaching him or her to read, as this would be harmful, not helpful.
I wanted to test whether this was really the case as I was keen to teach my own children and I believed other parents would like to be given permission to do so also.
I wrote some of the first instruction sheets for a doctor father whose son was in a remedial group I was taking and he was worried about his son’s progress and keen to give him additional help. Then I had a friend whose child was really bored at school because they were not going fast enough for him. The activities were planned to have the flexibility to cater for quite differing ages and abilities. I prepared a series of twelve weeks of sessions that a parent could do in an informal way with a child of about five.
Developing the program
The first daily program was originally typed in two carbon copies. The suggestions included things that I had used informally when playing with Lindy, or observed her using herself when playing with material we had around the house. To make sure the instructions could be followed I would then give the typed sheet to my long suffering husband, a consulting engineer with no previous teaching experience, together with the equipment needed and watch him try the activities with Lindy by following the written instructions alone. These turned out to be absolutely hilarious sessions for the three of us, but also of real value.
The other teachers at my school did not approve of my ideas but I wanted to test whether they worked.
Experimental study using the program
I set up my study with four groups of volunteer parents and their five year olds, and four matched control groups- (a control group and experimental group from each of four different schools.) None of the children could read at the beginning of the study, but at the end of the three months the control group of children were tested and found to have a reading age on average of three months from their school instruction, but the children whose parents had spent twelve weeks working with them through the sessions you have here (there have been some slight modifications) had an average reading age of six months, double that of the control group, which was a statistically significant result - that is it could not have been achieved by chance.
independence in reading
Test results
The greatest improvement appeared in the test of word synthesis - sounding out words - which is a skill which, when developed, leads quite quickly to independence in reading
More details of program
To make the control and experimental groups more even it was ensured that an even number of boys and girls were selected, and that an even number of children from each school class. The children of volunteer parents were allotted at random to the control group or the experimental groups until these groups were complete.
I am telling you this to encourage you that this is material that has been shown to work in a strictly controlled experiment and you should have some real success with it.
However there were some things provided in the experiment that I can’t give you in a boo
What else do you need?
Firstly I believed that parents had to understand a little about why they were doing certain things and this information was shared with them in their groups of twelve parents - all mothers - in a weekly meeting. ( I think we would have fathers too today!)
You have all this information that was shared, in the initial chapters of this book. But also all the equipment needed was provided weekly, and you will need to find most of this yourself. Some of it has been included in the book, but there is much you need to find because (even though it is generally unexceptional) it is motivating to your child. And finally with all the groups who have formally done this program we have had a weekly sharing meeting with myself or another teacher providing support.
Original program meetings
These meetings were great! For one hour during each of the twelve weeks I met with each of the four groups of mothers somewhere in their child’s school - in the canteen, or a back room or just in the corridor. The mothers came each week to tell us how things were going. They reported that they could work with their own child, they could see how he was learning - sometimes frustratingly slowly, sometimes incredibly quickly. We marveled together over similar triumphs and groaned together over the unbelievable difficulties in leading a child to hear that “c” plus “a” plus “t” says cat, and then reported with glee when he finally started to “get it”.
Finding time
A large proportion of the mothers found that once they had initiated a learning time together it was their child who begged for more and kept them at it. Of course they all found difficulties in fitting in the time - some did it before breakfast, others missed every day for a fortnight, one lady had a baby (her fifth I think) but only missed one week’s meeting, but she was back with a pink-shawled bundle in a “carry cot’ the next week.
Parent skills
I tried to encourage these parents, but more than anything they encouraged me, with their keenness, their understanding of their own children’s problems and their universal concern for their child’s best welfare. They were many of them, concerned that the school was not meeting their child’s needs (this was during their child's first weeks at school - they were also most appreciative of their child’s teacher's skill and patience) and they were very grateful for the knowledge of how to fill the gaps.
Obviously there were individual differences - and quite vast differences in achievement, and it must have been discouraging to the mothers whose children learned less quickly. However they all battled on, glad to know where their child stood and able to give him the extra he or she needed.
Self motivation
The weekly meetings motivated the parents - particularly as each week we all shared how we had got on, so you would feel bad if you had to say you had not got around to doing anything. (I participated as a parent with our second daughter in the second year). In the first study parents agreed to attempt to do three or four sessions a week, but as I repeated this program with dozens of other groups in subsequent years there was no such agreement but I know that many people found the weekly meetings valuable and that it was helpful to share their frustrations and triumphs. One mother compared it to a “weight watcher’s” meeting!
You might like to find a friend who would do the activies at the same time as you and you could come together regularly to share how you are going. But also you may wish to just do it at your leisure - though I would warn you, you will never get around to it if you do not give it some priority.
Other research findings
You may be interested in some other things that my research attempted to clarify. I hypothesized that parents from different socioeconomic groups would differ in their ability to teach their children, and the parents from privileged backgrounds may not need the assistance provided in this book - that is that those volunteer parents in the control groups from the privileged areas would do as well as those in the experimental groups, or at least better than the less privileged group. But this was definitely not the case. Both children from privileged back grounds and those from schools in the least privileged areas I could find, all improved their reading levels similarly - that is doubled their learning rate over the period.
That is, even you people who are reading this book, who know a great deal about stimulating your children, need the sort of help provided in this book to actually teach reading to your child efficiently.
Socioeconomic group selection
Two of the schools were in areas where almost all of the parents we're in the highest status levels according to a current socioeconomic study - e,g, lawyers, engineers, doctors and managers were the major occupational groups. In the other two schools the parents were almost without exception from the lower three socioeconomic status levels according to the same scale. e,g. manual workers, drivers, process workers, laborers etc. The schools were also in a state housing commission area, houses there be being allocated after a means test. The other schools were in high status suburbs with beautiful and expensive housing, leafy streets and lovely gardens.
I also established very clearly that parents were very keen to work with their own children and to learn what they could do, with levels of volunteering up to 65% of parents, with the main restriction on volunteering being whether they were available at the time of the weekly meetings. (Not so many mothers were working then as now!)
Volunteers
Volunteers varied from 36% to 76% of parents of first year students at the schools. There were more from the high status schools, for reasons mainly associated to their ability to attend a daytime session or availability of transport to the school. More of the lower status parents were in full time employment and unable to get away during the day. (If night time meetings had been available, we would have had much higher levels of volunteering.)
The results showed the very considerable teaching ability of the mothers, and can be extrapolated to parents generally. It showed that a child does not become bored or confused by different teaching methods or upset by unskilled teaching but does particularly well with individual assistance by someone who becomes really familiar with his own methods of learning.