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An education phenomenon
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| Julie Lamin |
A group of pupils at a Wirral school may never realise it, but they are responsible for a major change in the way English secondary schools are tackling literacy and learning.
Julie Lamin was a Head of English at Mosslands School in Wallasey when electronic white boards really started making their presence felt.
She soon recognised their potential.
"I thought that they would be great in helping with literacy, and I soon saw that they were," said Julie.
"I spent a lot of time examining what was available yet I found nothing out there giving me what I actually wanted.
"Gradually I began honing my ideas about what should be available to schools, what could capture and hold students' interest.
"With some help from IT-minded friends, I created a few sample web pages to display in the classroom while I studied the feedback from pupils. It was simply remarkable.
"It was one of the best and easiest lessons I'd ever had. They were much more focussed and they really worked together.
"In fact when I discussed the site with them afterwards one of the pupils, who had been uncharacteristically enthusiastic during the lesson, thought about it for a while and said, I get it miss, you're just trying to sneak in the learning'.
"The feedback proved a problem. I could see that pupils wanted to learn this way but realised I couldn't create a site like this on top of my normal workload.
"Something had to go, so last July I left school and set up Copycatcher.
"Although I am out of the classroom, I am writing and helping to teach thousands of students I'll never see. Just as Tony Benn once said that he had left the Commons to concentrate on politics, I could say I have left school to concentrate on education.
"And all that came about because a group of pupils showed enthusiasm for a new idea.
"Copycatcher was born out of the desire to provide a window onto the world the current secondary school population will be responsible for over the next fifty years.
"Its purpose is to catch news stories to present them in a way which will engage young people. We live in a world where what's happening in one place can be seen in another within seconds. Yet, for all that, news is something remote for many young people.
"Copycatcher aims to explain the issues behind news in understandable language and a lively style. News is often about young people - education, childhood obesity and exercise, binge drinking, sport - but it's presented with an adult audience in mind.
"Traditional newspapers are wonderful and part of my mission is to get students reading more of them, but first we have to involve them in issues.
"We also want to show how the same events can be presented from different angles. I have access to writers who are not simply specialists in their field but who are also teachers who understand about key stages in education and curriculum matters.
| "I am writing and helping to teach thousands of students I’ll never see." | | Julie Lamin |
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"Each day, as well as creating our own agenda, we select news items from a range of media. Copycatcher provides discussion and learning opportunities through a wide variety of up to the minute articles which can be used on the day or accessed at a later date.
"Alongside serious news there are reviews of games, films, inventions, sport and often a light-hearted news item. We aim to provide something for every subject. Most importantly we endeavour to explain and interpret news to promote understanding and provoke curiosity.
"Ive always been on a mission to get students reading. We're at the start of the National Year of Reading and that holds an important message that I want to get out to schools. Without literacy we cannot engage in the world at all. That is why repressive governments close classrooms. In newly-born democracies, the best chance for surviving to maturity is to get the population literate.
"Reading is very important to the future of our nation. When you look at the gang culture and random violence you can see how people who can't read fall outside society. By the age of 11 some children in our schools have reading ages as low as six, others as high as an adult. If you're the one with the lower skills it won't be long when you start hating a system which you struggle to part of.
"Lack of reading skills takes away your self-esteem, making you vulnerable to something else that will give you self-esteem. Gang members feel important and powerful because they are valued by other members for their ability to be violent. It makes them feel good about themselves because they get praise and recognition for something they're good at.
"Research shows that men who end up in prison are also the ones with the poorest literacy skills.
"Think for yourself how important reading is, how difficult it is to do anything without it. Schools often get the blame or are expected to deal with the problem but they're dealing with pupils who get little support for reading at home.
"The driving passion behind Copycatcher is to improve literacy skills across the board and to include everyone, from the least to the most able.
"I set up the business last September and already we've got schools from around the country on board. We have schools where pupils have learning difficulties and others that are top of the government's league tables and that is something I'm immensely proud of.
"Those pupils don't know what they started."
2:56pm Thursday 7th February 2008
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