We have met the young man at the centre of this posting before. He is eleven, and transferred to secondary school this year. His behaviour at primary school was so poor that he engaged the full panoply of a local authority's support services, including psychiatric services, and was given a very poor prognosis of survival at secondary school. He is a big lad, and had been prone to violence. His target for English at the end of his first year (Year 7) was Level 2c - the bare minimum expected of seven-year-olds. He was effectively starting secondary school without having received a primary education.
The root of his problem was sensitivity to light, which had prevented him from learning to read, and given him a life of frustration and misery, which he had taken out through extreme misbehaviour, frequently reducing his class teacher to tears. A hospital had suggested light sensitivity as an issue. I followed this with an assessment using the Institute of Optometry screening kit, and, five months later, he received his tinted lenses on the NHS. I've been seeing him for a weekly lesson, with his father present. His reading has improved to the extent that we were able to teach him to read the dinosaurs chapter in The Dangerous Book for Boys, and Queen Elizabeth's speech to her troops at Tilbury. Both well above 2c - he reached 2b on the school's assessment by October. He has had no serious disciplinary problems at school other than an over-reaction to being teased by other pupils. At home, his behaviour is unrecognisable. We've used a series of targets for civil language, absence of violence, work and co-operation, and this week he scored perfect 10s on each for the first time He has not shown violent behaviour for nine weeks.
His father's estimate on his reading is that it has "improved tenfold", but the consequences of hiis lack of primary education, particularly of his lack of reading, are immense. To begin with, he has little or no general knowledge, and knows very few words. Looking at a Battle of Britain video, he talked about "the man" for any general, or "the teams" for armed forces, using the vocabulary of his everyday life. He didn't know that the Spitfire was a fighter, and thought that the Germans had Lancaster bombers - they'd been in the papers the previous week and every bomber was a Lancaster as a result. At the same time, he picked out as an important point Dowding's - "the Man's" - decision not to send more fighters to France when it would have jeopardised the UK's defence.(I'd asked him to pick out three points from the video, and say why they were important. This was definitely one of them.)
The approach I'm using is to build up his vocabulary through discussion, each time going back to something he knows, and refining it, making sure the thinking behind each new word comes from him, and using analogy. For example, his first thought on being asked what "the man" did was that he was PM. So, I asked him who he'd been advising not to send the fighters, and built up the idea that that man was PM. So, what did "the man" do? He was chief. Chief of what? This took us to a discussion of fighters and bombers. I explained that bombers were part of bomber command, and that there was a coastal command. What, then might fighters be part of? We agreed, fighter command. We agreed an alteration to his notes (using Word) and I gave him a printout to practise for for next week. We discussed the video again, and considered what might be two more important points. "Knowing when they were coming and where they were..." was his next one. So, progress. But every piece in the jigsaw still has to be put in place. To be continued.