Discovery-learning and the information explosion both require that children have study skills. What exactly are these skills and how can they be taught?
Voluntary individual tuition for adults with acute problems in reading, writing and spelling is not new. It has always gone on quietly for a few people in a scattered and isolated way. What has changed in the 1970 s is that New Zealanders are starting to realise the scale of the need for tuition and are beginning to respond with purpose.
A fable
Subscribe, or better still have the school subscribe, to one of the half dozen or more journals devoted to reading. But be aware: some journals specialise in one area of reading or specialise in research studies rather than articles dealing with the teaching or improvement of reading. The following notes will give some idea of what you can expect to find in different reading journals.
Most children begin school expecting to learn to read. If this expectation is not met, if they have problems with reading, they may develop a dislike for reading, or just a hopeless feeling about it. The reading problem and the poor attitude to it aggravate each other, and this can lead to the child developing a poor opinion of himself and poor attitudes to school work generally.
Legibility research has been going on for two hundred years and it has discovered some useful pointers for anyone who is writing down words, or selecting words, to be put in front of anyone learning.
Streaming (or ability grouping or tracking, as the Americans would have it) has been tried, thrown out, revived, recommended, debunked and debated periodically in recent decades. Writing for New Zealand teachers in the mid-70s, Elley provided a balanced and comprehensive coverage of research for and against this common organizational practice. His review of the research is reprinted with minor revisions as item 8 in this set, No.2, 1984.
Issues of grouping and streaming are still hotly debated by teachers and administrators. Many are moved to turn to the research workers, and ask the simple question - Should we stream our children into ability groups? Like most questions concerned with school organization, there is no simple answer. It depends on our objectives, our classroom conditions, the qualities of the teachers available and the teaching methods they favour.
It was 40°C when I entered the large suburban primary school to observe three early childhood students on teaching practice. The principal directed me along a seemingly endless corridor to the junior primary section but the classrooms were deserted. "They're out in the yard," a passing teacher advised and she was right. A couple of hundred six and seven year olds were standing in the sun while a teacher called out names from a sheet
Drugs are a problem. Drug education is a problem. Drug users are a problem. But now, thanks to the Londonbased Institute for the Study of Drug Dependence (lSDD), the in-service training and education of the front line professionals who have to cope with the results of alcohol and drug abuse is going to be less of a problem.
