Walt sent this delightful photo in response to Stephen Glick's fabulous review of The Nosy Neighbour.
Thank you, Walt.
]]>I am writing on behalf of my student Mr Stephen Glick who has written a book review of ‘The Nosy Neighbour’ by Jennie Cole, which he would like you to read.
Stephen has been a student of mine for several years, and you may be interested to know that he completed the ‘Yes we can read’ reading scheme with me in 2018 at our local library in Cromer.
We continued to meet after the ‘Yes we can read’ course so that I could support Stephen in consolidating and developing his literacy skills. However, the pandemic and the subsequent lockdown regulations meant we had to finish our sessions, and this worried Stephen as he thought he would forget all that he had learnt. So, I was delighted when Stephen’s local Community Resource and Learning Centre (Merchants’ Place, Cromer), agreed to fund me to work with him in February 2023.
It has been great working with Stephen again to improve his literacy skills and confidence, and one of the high points for both of us so far has been the time we have spent together reading ‘The Nosy Neighbour’. We love Walt because he is such an amusing character and quite relatable as we are both in our 60s!
The subsequent review is based upon a recorded discussion that Stephen and I had about ‘The Nosy Neighbour’ which I typed and edited. I then dictated a paragraph to Stephen each week during our session so that he could practise using a dictionary to spell difficult words, revise how to punctuate a sentence and learn how to separate information into paragraphs.
Because Stephen is dyslexic and has moderate learning difficulties, he often gets tired whenever he has to write and spell new words. Consequently, it has taken him several weeks to complete his review. However, he was determined to achieve it, and he has learnt a lot by working out how to write the sentences himself rather than just copying the text of our conversation. He has worked incredibly hard and I am very proud of him.
Now Stephen would like to share his review with as many people as possible and he would be delighted if you could use his review, or part of it, on your website. He also plans to ask Cromer Library if they will consider stocking the ‘Walt’s Adventures’ stories so that older adult learners have something interesting and enjoyable to read.
We would also be grateful if you could pass on our congratulations and thanks to Jennie Cole for writing such an enjoyable series of books.
I have attached a photograph (with Stephen’s permission) of Stephen receiving his ‘Yes we can read’ certificate, scanned copies of Stephen’s original handwritten review, and my typed draft of our recording.
Finally, thank you for the great work which you do to promote adult literacy.
Kind regards from Liz Bale.
]]>Gatehouse Books understands the unique challenges faced by adult learners and strives to create resources that are engaging, relevant, and accessible. Their books are carefully crafted to meet the needs of learners at different stages of their literacy journey, from beginners to more advanced readers.
One of the key strengths of Gatehouse Books is their commitment to diversity and inclusion. They offer a diverse range of titles that reflect the experiences and backgrounds of adult learners, ensuring that everyone can find something that resonates with them. This inclusivity not only helps learners feel seen and represented but also fosters a sense of belonging and motivation to continue their learning journey.
Gatehouse Books cover a wide range of topics, encompassing everyday life, humour, nostalgia, inspirational biographies and multicultural stories. This variety allows learners to explore their interests and find enjoyment whilst improving their reading skills. Gatehouse Books has something for everyone.
In addition to their extensive collection of books, Gatehouse Books also provides valuable resources and support for educators. They offer tutor resources and supplementary materials that can be used to enhance individual or classroom instruction and facilitate meaningful discussions. This support ensures that educators have the tools they need to create engaging and effective lessons that cater to the unique needs of their learners.
Gatehouse Books is more than just a provider of educational materials; they are a partner in the journey towards literacy and language proficiency. Their commitment to empowering adult learners and supporting educators makes them an essential resource for any adult literacy or ESOL program.
]]>Some of the What’s Your Story? characters came together this week to celebrate the release of four new stories in the collection. They enjoyed featuring in the new books and are hoping others will enjoy reading a little about their lives. The author of the collection, Jennie Cole, said, “What I like about this series is that the stories are all so different, yet each story reminds us of how much we all have in common, they are full of hope and inspiration and all the characters show bravery and resilience in some way.”
The four new stories introduce Misra, Islam, Hassan and Muna. Misra comes from Ethiopia and loves cooking, as we follow her around her local supermarket and then see her cooking a traditional dish in her kitchen. Islam came to the UK from Sudan and prepares to have her second baby in the UK. Hassan came to the UK from Yemen and talks about how much he misses the landscape of his country. We see how he has developed a love of the English countryside as a way to connect him to his homeland. The fourth character, Muna, shares her love of reading and her ambition to have her own book on the bookshelves she frequently visits.
What’s Your Story? Series comprises 8 books and is an ideal starting point to encourage conversation and invite others to share their story.
]]>Jennie Cole, author of the Liz and Joe Series from Gatehouse Books, visited LASSN last week to share her new books* and met Jon Beech [Director of LASSN] and English At Home Volunteers Manager, David Skivington.
LASSN is a registered charity that was set up in 1999 to welcome and support refugees and asylum seekers in Leeds. The charity runs programs such as Grace Hosting [a hot meal and a safe place to sleep for people that have nowhere else to go], a Befriending program to help those that are isolated, Connecting Opportunities – a project that helps to develop skills and experience to find work and be part of the local community and English At Home, developing language so people can cope with everyday life and become more independent.
For more information about LASSN please visit their website: www.lassn.org.uk
* 4 new additions to the Liz and Joe Series are: Liz and Joe at the Allotment, Liz and Joe at the Festival, Art Adventures with Liz and Joe, Joe Gets Caught Out. For more details, visit: Liz and Joe Series – Gatehouse Books
]]>We have partnered with Gardners, the UK's leading book distributor, to make our digital catalogue available to buy or borrow from leading eBook retailers and public & institutional libraries.
Now you can browse, buy or borrow Gatehouse eBooks at...
Apple, Blackwells, Browns Books for Students, Fable, Google, Libby, Overdrive, plus many more.
Check out your preferred eBook supplier for details.
]]>Gatehouse Books author, Jennie Cole showed her support for asylum seekers and refugees by donating copies of her new books to Leeds Asylum Seeker Support Network (LASSN). Jennie, and the stars of the books, visited the LASSN office to make their donation and find out more about the charity.
LASSN’s English at Home project offers one to one English tuition at home for refugees and asylum seekers who can’t go to English classes. Many learners have young children, while others are disabled, are carers, or have mental health difficulties. Volunteers come from all walks of life; some have learned English themselves and want to pass on their skills whilst others are native speakers who want to show their support for asylum seekers and refugees. Jennie Cole said “I volunteered on the English at Home programme more than 20 years ago, before becoming a full time ESOL [English for Speakers of Other Languages] tutor. Learning English has a transformative effect and can unlock asylum seekers and refugees’ skills and talents.”
The What’s Your Story? Series comprises four books written by Jennie Cole with Ana, Kisanet, Ousmane and Sadjo, all former ESOL students of Jennie, each sharing a story of their own. The books are all set in Leeds, and feature Kirkgate Market, a tour of Leeds city centre, a shopping trip, and Leeds’ Light Night. Ousmane, who features in one of the books said “Light Night is a special night. It is free so everyone can share the experience. I want other people to be able to practise English and learn more about the place we live.”
Riley Coles, Volunteers Manager for LASSN’s English at Home project said “Adult asylum seekers and refugees who are learning English need books which reflect their maturity and diverse experiences. Our volunteers and learners will be delighted to have books which use simple English to tell rich and varied stories.”
Editors’ Notes:
For more information about LASSN please visit our website: www.lassn.org.uk
]]>Congratulations, Amy!
]]>Donna said: “If it wasn’t for Lin I wouldn’t have done it. I feel I’ve become real friends with you....Improving my reading makes me feel really happy”.
Ronnie and Faye broke the record for the fastest completion of Yes We Can Read. Everyone goes at their own pace, but nine weeks is quite incredible. Ronnie is hoping to become a teaching assistant. Ronnie said: "Read Easy has “helped me with my confidence….Now I feel secure. Faye is an amazingly good teacher".
]]>With £98,020 from the fund, Norfolk County Council will work with volunteers to support emergent readers aged 8+ to develop their skills. The project will use Yes We Can Read, a one-to-one phonics based teaching tool, to help non-readers to become fluent readers in six months or less, providing people with a skill that will support them at all stages of their life – whether it is for education, work or recreation.
Catherine White, director of Gatehouse Media, publisher of Yes We Can Read says, "This is an exciting project and we are delighted to support Norfolk's drive to improve literacy across the county."
]]>In the candid interview, Vicky described how she was inspired to go into teaching adults to read and write based on her own experience of Further Education and, importantly, to inspire and empower adults who, not achieving at school, often due to the impact of poverty and struggling with dominant literacy, were labelled and pathologised.
]]>When Jungle Books volunteer and campaigner Sarah Story approached Gatehouse, we agreed to help fund a book order on a match funding basis, so for every book paid for by their supporters, we provide a second book free. The campaign has so far raised over £330 and the first consignment of books is now on its way to Calais.
Sarah says, "People are very keen to learn here, unfortunately the material they are using - dictionaries and young adult books (like Roald Dahl) - is not useful for beginners to the language! Gatehouse Books will make a huge difference to people's ability to communicate with UK authorities, and read danger signs when trying to cross the Channel Tunnel, but also to relieve boredom and enable people to get at least some Educational benefit out of the horrific limbo of the Calais camp!"
If you would like to contribute to Sarah's fund, please get in touch at info@gatehousebooks.com or call 01925 267778.
]]>"Illiterate inhabitants are unable to read instructions re guarding against Ebola, often with fatal consequences. Dangerous myths and rumours about causes and cures abound," says Libby Coleman, author of Yes We Can Read.
]]>"I’m very touched by your generosity in donating 3 Yes we Can Read books to Amazing Children Uganda for me to take to Kampala next week.
They make a huge difference in the lives of the children, and the students sponsored into school are so proud to write to their sponsors that they are helping their friends learn to read.
I attach photos for you. The ground you can see is the earth floor of the church where the children who are not in school sleep at night.
Please do forward this message with the photos to the authors Nick and Libby Ainley with our sincere thanks for the donation of 3 books they gave us last year.
It is wonderful to have such support for our work."
Amazing Children Uganda have been using Yes We Can Read for three years. Groups of A level students (former street children who have been educated through the charity) coach the younger street children with Yes We Can Read. Adult volunteers who are illiterate also benefit from the programme.
]]>Ms Adie is the new patron of Dorset’s Read Easy scheme and she was at the packed town hall on Tuesday to present certificates to graduates.
She said: “I feel immensely honoured to be patron... There are so many things that reading encompasses – the whole of human life put into words... I feel passionately about this that everybody should achieve that point where they feel confident, not only confident, but happy that they can read because reading is about pleasure as much as it is about information, warning and advice.”
Bridport’s Read Easy chairman Christian Tyler thanked everyone who has supported the scheme, especially co-ordinator Vee Driscoll, in its two and a half years and asked that people spread the word. He said, “Since October 2011 we have had 36 people from the Bridport area with 16 graduates... We have done a great deal but there is an awful lot more we can do. According to surveys about one in five or six adults struggle. Bridport has an adult population of about 12,000 people which suggests there are about 2,500 who need help.”
Article by Rene Gerryts of the Bridport News.
]]>First Prize - Danielle Lilley: Mrs Todd and her pet cat
Second Prize - Stuart Bowie: Education is the Drug of Choice
Third Prize - William Silver: A Collie's Tale.
Marie McNamara, author of the Gatehouse Book Getting Better, has overcome significant difficulties in her life to graduate in Nursing from Salford University. Yet just a few years ago, Marie was a stay-at-home single mother of three children, living on benefits, who struggled with reading and writing and had no qualifications or worthwhile job prospects.
Marie’s aim is to encourage others like her to take the steps needed to improve their lives. To this end, Marie wants the royalties from sales of her book, Getting Better, to be used to encourage people to get writing and thinking about how they can make their own lives better.
]]>"The percentage of children who, at 16, lack basic literacy remains stubbornly high at around 19%. Of course, ensuring that our children leave school with good literacy and numeracy skills is essential and it must be a priority, but we cannot leave behind a generation of adults who have been failed by the education systems of the past. Low skill adults need a second chance and we must recognise that skills can be developed outside formal education. One way of doing this is through peer-to-peer learning."
She praised Andy Paradise of Read & Grow which uses the tool Yes We Can Read with its 'each one teach one' approach.
She spoke about Yes We Can Read's 'startling results' in literacy projects such as in Westminster hostels for the homeless, and described how the book has recently been made available in prison libraries, "providing prisoners with invaluable access to this excellent resource. Peer-to-peer learning is arguably the most effective way to boost skills among prisoners. It removed the barriers created by an uncomfortable classroom and teachers whom the inmates often cannot relate to."
]]>Developed for adults who are learning English as a second language, these short stories, set in the East End of London, offer an insight into life in the UK and are a useful tool for building vocabulary around everyday life. There are 7 titles in the series: A New Home, Fadumo Goes Shopping, My Son is Sick, From Here to There, Good Neighbours, Rima’s Day, My Mother-in-Law.
In 2003 the ESOL Outreach team at Tower Hamlets College gained funding from the East London ESOL Pathfinder to produce a pack of teaching materials relevant to the context of Outreach ESOL classes. Tower Hamlets College was the lead partner for the East London ESOL Pathfinder. The resulting pack of materials included 6 easy reading booklets for beginning ESOL learners. The reading booklets proved popular and it was suggested that we should try to get them published. We approached Avantibooks who agreed to publish them as a series entitled The New Eastenders, but those books are now out of print.
We are delighted that they have now been given a new lease of life by Gatehouse Books as the East Enders Series for a new generation of ESOL learners. We have added a seventh title to the series, called My Mother-in-Law, and a useful set of tutor resources and student worksheets. We hope you enjoy using them.
Marta Paluch & Mary Pierce
]]>But it inspired one teacher to introduce a similar programme in England. Students aged 15-16 at Brune Park Community School in Hampshire have been using Yes We Can Read, a phonics-based programme designed to develop reading for meaning among poor readers or non-readers in Uganda. And the scheme has been so successful it is now to be expanded with secondary students going to coach children in feeder primary schools in the area.
"Reading ages have increased significantly and the improvement in confidence, behaviour and attendance has amazed us," headteacher Richard Kelly says.
One student, who was in trouble in and outside school, came in just to teach a looked-after girl whose reading age of 6 had not improved throughout primary school... She has now reached her chronological reading age.
Published in TES magazine on 28 June, 2013
]]>The students, with the support of their English teacher, are running a catch-up reading project, in which Year 7s are coached by Year 11s using ‘Yes We Can Read’. The progress in both year groups has been quite remarkable. The students want to share their story so they have produced this video to show to other schools across the UK.”
Richard Kelly, Headteacher
Brune Park Community School, Gosport
READING skills have shot through the roof at a school in Gosport after the introduction of a new literacy programme.
But Brune Park School in Military Road has not employed specialists or invested in expensive IT equipment.
Instead, 30 Year 7 and Year 11 pupils have teamed up, with the older students teaching the younger ones from a book called Yes We Can Read.
As previously reported in The News, the book uses a photo alphabet to teach learners and is championed by local group, Read and Grow.
Lessons in the book are split across two pages, one used by the older pupils at Brune Park, and the other page by the younger students.
They work through the exercises, using at first the photo alphabet, which is formed of letters made from pictures shaped like the letter.
The success of the scheme was marked by headteacher Richard Kelly who yesterday gave certificates to the pupils.
Even mums and dads took the time out of work to attend and see how well their children had progressed.
The Year 11 pupils are volunteers from third set classes, with noticeable improvements in their own performance, attendance and behaviour.
Teacher Karen Thomas supervises the tutor period as the pupils teach each other and said the pupils love it.
She said: ‘It started off where I was telling them what to do. Then after a while because it’s so self explanatory, the first one in the class would be getting the books out.’
Article by Ben Fishwick, The Portsmouth News, 26th April 2013
]]>On Tuesday 5 March, Joseph Edmunds went to London and gave a presentation. Joseph spoke clearly, fluently and with
confidence in front of a very intimidating audience. He was a credit to Brune Park and should be duly proud of upholding
the school’s reputation for learning.
Brune Park Life Newsletter Issue 1 April 2013
]]>The ease of delivery of Yes We Can Read and its ‘each one teach one’ philosophy enables anyone who can read fluently to teach a non or poor reader within 6 months or less. No training is required.
Using the ethos ‘for the prisoner by the prisoner’ it is hoped that inmates will pick up Yes We Can Read in the prison libraries and teach fellow inmates to read. At present over half the prison population has poor or no reading skills. Prisons benefiting from this pilot scheme include HMP Holloway, Ford, Aberdeen, Maghaberry, Brixton, Parkhurst, Kingston, Dorchester and Aylesbury and Stal.
Read & Grow runs and funds a number of teaching reading projects at a local level in Gosport and Fareham, in schools, libraries, homeless hostels and pre-school groups, helping to break the cycle of illiteracy. Patron Rt Hon Caroline Dinenage MP is now working tirelessly on Read & Grow’s behalf to promote Yes We Can Read in the House and to get the 121 teaching reading scheme into every prison. The Rt Hon Jeremy Wright MP, Minister for Prisons, and the National Offender Management Service back the project wholeheartedly.
]]>Andy Paradise of social enterprise Read & Grow is leading the project, with books gifted by The People's Book Prize.
In UK prisons - where over half the population is made up of non or poor readers - the prisoners who can read will teach those who can’t.
No training in the use of Yes we can read is required, so prisoners can just pick it up, read the general instructions in 10 minutes or so, and start coaching. Learners no longer have to stop learning to read if they leave prison in the middle of the learning process, as anyone who can read on the outside can pick up the book and continue coaching seamlessly.
]]>Coach: "I feel amazing I want to help more."
Yr 11: "I walk with a spring in my step."
Yr 7: "I do not get so angry now."
Yr 7: "I read a whole paragraph out loud in history, never done that before."
Teacher: "It's so much more than just learning to read."
Look out for the full case study coming soon.
]]>"For me this is an intellectual cancer of society which needs to be eradicated. The People's Book Prize has launched a new initiative to help get the whole nation reading with an inaugural donation of £5,000 from TPBP 2010 Non-Fiction Award Winner, Brett Alegre-Wood, author of THE 3+ 1PLAN. The money will be used to buy copies of Yes We Can Read, winner of The People's Book Prize 2011 Special Achievement Award, which in turn will be donated through libraries and other institutions. Yes We Can Read enables anyone who can read fluently to teach a non-reader aged 8 - 80 within 6 months or less. We've heard of many success stories so far with the oldest learner being 74 and the youngest coach 11."
For more information, visit TPBP's website.
]]>