SCANNING THE SCREEN at the PALS lab a
(Fr) student James Turner, 16, and instructor

Ss,

Lloy Falconer. School district 63 piloted the

Recipes make reading relevant

by Valorie Lennox
The Review

To be learned, literacy must be
relevant.

And, for six-year-olds, nothing
is more relevant than eating.

“T think I’ve taught my children
to read by feeding them,”
confesses Deep Cove Grade 1
teacher Clarice Bloomenthal.

She believes in a whole
language approach which
immerses the children in language
and teaches them why literacy is
useful before trying to teach them
to read.

“They need to know why —
what good is it to me to learn how
to read and write. So the child
learns there is a purpose to
learning language.”

Recipes are ideally suited to
proving the value of reading:
children learn that following
simple printed recipes produces
treats for themselves and their
families.

Bloomenthal’s recipes are
illustrated with pictures, to help
the beginning readers follow the

e instructions.

@

“Cooking is a life skill. It’s
always the neatest way to teach
reading,” she said.

The same linking of literacy and
life skills is echoed half-a-world
away, in a poem composed by
semi-literate adults in India. The
verses, cited at an October 1987
international literacy seminar in
Toronto, state in part:

To sign one's name means
nothing.

Or to read a few words means
nothing.

Can literacy help us live

a little better? Starve a little
less?

They say that things are being
planned

for us — the poor.

Would literacy help us in
knowing

those government plans?

Would it help us know

how to raise our yield and
increase our income?

All this we think is learning for
living.

When literacy is introduced as a
skill which leads to better living,
the children are more willing to
tackle the difficult task of learning
written language, Bloomenthal
said.

The process takes time. Some
children come into class already
able to read while others only pick
up. the skill near the end of the
school year.

“You can see when their light
bulbs come on,” Bloomenthal
said. “Each time it happens
you ve got a miracle happening in
the class.”

Beginning readers must learn
many skills. They must understand
how language works, being able to
tell the difference between a
sentence, a word and a letter.

Reading preparation includes
exercises to help children identify
the start and ending of words, the
number of letters in a word, the
sound of letters and the placement
of paragraphs and titles.

Children must learn to guess an
unfamiliar word through clues: the
sound of individual letters, the
word’s place in the sentence, the
most logical word to make the
sentence meaningful. Eventually
they must recognize, on sight,
thousands of words.

“All of those things work
together,” Bloomenthal said.
Unlike reading instruction 20
years ago, phonetics are not
stressed.

“The phonetic rules only work

to fiend Jim Smith,age 8.

AND | DID THIS . . . seven-year-old Jeffrey Lenton (right)

IBM literacy program in Canada starting in
January 1988.

about 45 per cent of the time,”
Bloomenthal noted. Instead of
learning rules about language,
children learn to read and write
much as they learn to speak,
gradually becoming more skilled
with practice.

And, just as a child learns how
to speak better when surrounded
by speech, a child surrounded by
reading will read more
successfully.

That realization prompted the
pre-school native children’s
storytime program at Brentwood
Elementary.

Indian Education Assistant Rita
Morris knew that even culturally
active households on the reserve
did not stress reading — the
traditional activities in the
longhouse and on the sport’s field
are based on an oral culture.

“One of the things that seems to
go through my mind — if our
children are coming into the

TheReview Wednesday, June 13,1990 — B11

PALS’ perfect teachers

PALS has the perfect teachers
for apprehensive students: patient,
entertaining, easy-to-understand
and able to give one-on-one
attention.

The teachers are computers,
supplemented by laser discs and
instructors Lloy Falconer and
Valerie Forshaw.

Most important of all — no
PALS instructor makes a student
feel stupid because he or she needs
help.

“The students can be very
intelligent people. They just can’t
read very well,” says
administrator-teacher Falconer.

Students, either adults or

school not as familiar with written
language as other children, we
need to turn them on to books,”
Morris said. “All schools are so
book-oriented.”

She chooses relevant material
for the hour-long weekly session
and encourages children and
parents to take home books “so
there is reading happening at
home. The children just love it.”

Native children who learn
English as a second language also
enhance their vocabulary before
entering an English-speaking
school, Morris said.

She hopes the program bridges
the gulf between the reserve and
the public school system.

“We're trying to set a situation
where the families and children
are really comfortable coming into
a school and seeing it as their
place,” she said.

teenagers, enter the program
reading at or below a Grade 5
level. Over the 20-week course,
reading skills increase by two to
four grade levels.

“The computer program uses
many of the senses — sight, sound
and touch — to highlight the
connection between sounds and
letters and between written and
spoken English,” Falconer said.

The relevance of written
language is shown at the start of
the program by an illustrated fable.
In the fable, improved written
communication averts a war in
ancient Sumaria.

Students work through the
program at their own pace,
repeating lessons when necessary.

Writing recipes, grocery lists,
resumes and letters is encouraged.

“What we try to do is bring in
anything that is relevant for the
people to use,” Falconer said.

The PALS program also
introduces computer and typing
skills, advantages in the job
market.

“I’m really impressed with the
adults who come here. They are
motivated, they are committed,
they have really busy lives but day
after day they make time to come
here,” Falconer said.

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