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This sheet was designed by my then head of the Service for Special Educational Needs a couple of decades ago. I still find it one of my quickest routes to supporting students to self analyse which aspects of writing they find most challenging. From this we make some decisions on priorities in the initial draft. We stop trying to juggle them all at the same time. It gives them back control. They can succeed on their own terms. Thank you Alvin!

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I've just received a round robin email containing this photo. I just love it. Does anybody know where it is?

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Yet those same mums will insist on having 'learning' homework for their sons and daughters who are struggling with print. "They have to learn to spell, and the only way is to go over them over and over again."

Rather like ironing.

Imagine somebody turning up on your doorstep with an enormous pile of white shirts. "I hear you're not very good at ironing? Well, I've brought you some to practise on."

That's what so much 'extra literacy homework' feels like. Boring. Totally uninspiring. A waste of time.

I adopt a different approach to my students who struggle with print.

First find something they enjoy and feel that they are good at.
Second build a shared enjoyment.
Then use that common pleasure to gradually and carefully show the value of print.

For example; for the mum who 'hates ironing',  the mum who is 'no good at it'.

Imagine somebody turning up on your doorstep with a gorgeous piece of colourful material. "With your wonderful figure and deep blue eyes, you would look stunning in this. Shall I help you to make a dress? First we need to cut it out. Next we need to stitch the seams. Oh, now we need to iron the seams. I'll show you the easiest way to do this.

Before your reluctant ironer knows where she is, she's wielding the iron voluntarily and learning better ways of ironing from her visitor.

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Mindfulness ...

• Is simply about paying attention and coming into the present moment. This means that you can begin to experience your life with exquisite vividness.

Now; the feeling was not euphoric. It was desolation. "Please please don't take this away from me too".

Taking and fetching the boys to and from school was my only responsibility in this cocooned state.

I think Henry, after his catastrophic brain hemorrhage is in the same period of recovery. His cognition was for many many months almost non existent. His brain, probably for its own recovery of stamina, is practising mindfulness for him. He exists 'in the minute'. He will eat the grapes I take him with such enthusiasm. It's very pleasing as a visitor to see such exquisite enjoyment of such a simple pleasure. Remember his music therapy comment "I can't believe I'm so good at this". Then the world comes crashing in.

He tells me his new grand daughter's second name is "Mary". It triggers a more distant memory. Cognition takes over from mindfulness, which is a good sign for brain function recovery, but a painful recognition of incapacity. He looks me in the eye and asks me the same question he has asked on my visits for the last year "Am I right in thinking that my Mary has died?"

His Mary. The one he cared for unstintingly throughout her decline into dementia. Probably 10 years of increasing responsibility for her daily life. She died shortly after his brain hemorrhage. He was then without mindfulness or cognition. Only now is cognition competing with mindfulness.

His love for Mary needs a cognitive framework.

Funny how people without brain injury are trying to go in the opposite direction. They are learning to abandon cognition and experience the 'here and now' more intensely.

Funny old world!

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. This was the news item that Billy chose when it was his turn to stand in front of his classmates as they sat expectantly on the mat. Other pupils had told us stuff like "I like my cat" and "I went shopping with my Granny". Billy's wand waved around majestically at them. This was his moment of glory, he had waited impatiently for his turn.
 "It's not broken" from Johnny.
 Billy retorted "It is broken. The light on the end can light up when you press this button, see, 'cept it's broken 'cos I left it in the rain". "What rain?" from Eliza. "The rain in my garden" from a rather irritated Billy. "Rain can't break things" from Eliza. "Yes it can, 'cos the light did light and now it is broken  'cos I left it out in the rain". A few more rounds of 'No it can't" and "Yes it can" followed, with various other pupils joining in the debate with comments on whether rain can break things. Eventually, with no prompting from me, Billy introduced the word 'battery'. The debate continued as to how rain can break a battery.

"'Cos my magic wand is full of water, and the battery won't work when it's full of water": Billy had started off his 'news' with short rather stammering sentences. All reticence is now forgotten. He is in full swing of an argument he understands himself, and wants to help his class mates to learn too. He is the teacher. He is teaching his classmates. They are learning the importance of asking the right questions.

I, their teacher, remain silent. Billy is teaching them at a level they can grasp. He is learning how to frame his words in ways they will understand. The magic wand was the catalyst. They are now embarked on a community of enquiry into the relationship between water and light, and how batteries fit into this relationship.

I really liked Samantha's question "Well if it's broken because it's full of water, why don't you just tip the water out?"

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What we had done together was not accommodate dementia. We had tackled dementia. We did not win the war, but we did win a battle. And it felt so good.
Sadly, I only worked with Howard once more. My employment changed. I moved on.
Today, I had the chance to tell him that his words to me were the inspiration I needed to train as a trainer in the cognitive programme.
I thanked him. He smiled.

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That was the basic tenet that Professor Reuven Feuerstein challenged. He taught youth from displacement camps how to take the IQ tests so that their scores increased. He devised his own programme to teach them how to be intelligent. He was a catalyst for change. Their futures changed.

This was how Instrumental Enrichment began, in the late 1940s. His work was, and still is, totally child centred. He believed that the system he was instructed to use by the government of his day did not suit the children in front of him.

He taught the children that they could change. He showed them how to be in charge of their own developing cognitive processes.

And in doing so, he began, ever so slowly, to change a system.

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Teachers have nightmares of losing control and collapsing in exhaustion if they truly let children's inventiveness shape their curriculums. Principals and parents have visions of monkeys taking over the zoo. Perhaps the rare teachers who do manage to make every day at school an unpredictable yet purposeful adventure in mutual education deserve to boast about it.

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In one lecture, she was adamant that we must give boys and girls the same toys, we must talk to them in the same way, we must offer them the same opportunities. Thus the 'stereo-type male and female behaviours' would be eradicated.

I remember arguing with her fiercely. "Males and females are different right from the start. They are made differently. They respond to the same stimuli in different ways."

Of course generalisations in human beings are necessarily limiting. Each human is an individual. Unique.

But on woman's hour today, another 'expert' now affirming along with a tide of evidence, that I was right after all. Boys and girls respond differently to the same national curriculum. Jill Berry, president of the Girls School Association, was advocating single sex schools in order to promote the success of girls.

Having raised 3 sons during years when there was extra effort in the promotion of science, technology, and sport for girls, surely it's the boys who need to have their learning environments tweaked by government edict. Boys are lagging behind on almost all education fronts.

One step is to recruit more males into education, both at teaching and support level.

The next step could be to integrate a cognitive programme into the school day - the problem solving scenario is popular with most boys.

Maybe in another 30 years from now ....................

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Well , late last night my husband called me in to listen to Word of Mouth on radio 4  - thankfully it was still available on listen again today. Masha Bell was discussing the link she sees between English conventional spelling (it's actually not at all conventional) and children who struggle to read.

Michael Rosen was quizzing her.
One thing she said " Spelling Bee is a buzz for a few talented spellers, and for the majority it's a real sting."

She also mentioned the beetroot face of a youngster who has just been laughed at by the class for a mispelling.

When I meet a teenager who has real problems learning to read and write, first I gain their trust. Then I ask them "When did you first know that you had a problem with reading?" Almost all youngsters proceed to tell of a specific 'beetroot' moment in their schooling. As they start their story with a few faultering words, the emotions begin to surface. The story gathers pace, and minute details begin to emerge from their memory. One common factor - The horror of being laughed at.

Shut down.

These are youngsters who, at Secondary school, tell me "Readings rubbish" and "Don't need to learn to read" and "My Dad can't read, and he's done ok".

Of course, reforming spelling is one change. Society needs many changes.

Having read again Masha Bell's website, and listened to her discussion with Michael Rosen, I am even more convinced that a more generous attitude to people who don't naturally find learning to spell gives them a buzz, would be a cheap way to raise reading standards nationally.

There is a natural progression for all learners of English literacy - read, write, spell. If spelling is put in front of reading, then catastrophe may follow.

That catastrophe starts as an emotional eruption - a beetroot moment.

It ends by locking a child with potential into bottom set. If they are not the languishing type, then beware volcanic eruptions with very expensive consequences.

So, 3 things

1.Take the pressure off spelling.
2.If a child gets laughed at for wrong spelling, deal with that moment very carefully.
3.Learning to read is the most important, learning to write phonetically is the second, and conventional spelling is the icing on the cake of literacy, and must not be put first.

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