A Learning Support Assistant's
Story.
My spelling was hideous and I had a short attention span. Copying from the board was a nightmare. By the time I looked up and down from the board to my paper, I used to either forget what I was writing or lose track of where I was – often missing out chunks.
I hated when I was given an essay to write because the majority of my work was marked in red. I used to have bold corrections from my teacher at each end of my work like ’check your work’, ‘use a dictionary’, or ‘careless work’. Since I had difficulty to read and therefore lacked ideas when it came to story writing. When I was handed back my work many times the teacher would give her comments aloud in front of the rest of the class. I never had good comments and I hated it when I used to see other kids laughing at what the teacher had to say about my work. It was very demoralizing because writing down my ideas required a lot of effort and I did not always manage to find the correct spelling of difficult words from the dictionary.
Whenever it was my turn to sit in the front row, I somehow seemed to work better than when I sat at the back row. Naughty kids got to sit in front so the teacher could keep an eye on them. Since I was one of the quietest kids in class I was generally made to sit in the back row.
 I hated reading aloud in class. Each child used to readout a few lines from the class reading book. While others were reading out, I used to try and count the lines to see which were going to be my reading lines – to quickly practice my lines before I read out aloud in class. In the meantime I’d feel so nervous that I would hear my heart beating fast. When it was my turn to read, I would be so tense that I would not be able to see the words and I would be gasping for breath because I would feel as if I’m chocking.
If someone would have gone through the text with me, I would probably have been more prepared and confident in my reading. My reading has improved but I still cannot read aloud in public as I would get very nervous. If I’m asked to read aloud I pronounce the words wrong, and would be reading without comprehension - probably because of lack of confidence from childhood.
I could never learn my multiplication tables. I was not allowed to use a copy of the tables. So working out certain multiplications and divisions took me ages and I was always the last one to hand in my schoolwork.
At school my favorite days was Thursdays when we had PE lessons. I was one of the most agile kids at school and I also was very good at gymnastics. Way back then PE lessons were considered as a waste of time and on many occasions, my teachers made me miss out on PE lessons because they wanted to punish me for being so ‘careless’ in my academic work, which used to leave a lot of anger in me.
J. M, Malta.
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so that we can include them - anonymously if you wish - on this page.
A
social worker writes of her experiences with words.
Whoa!
Major Flashback.
Success
with the Direct Learning Reading Comprehension Exercise. |
