The Write Offs

[Cherry678]

Lovely series, Sandy is amazing as always!I think I'm hooked already and wish them all the best I think it's going to be very emotional!

But I have to say I'm shocked at how someone who can't read (through no fault of their own, they've been let down by past teachers and the school system of their generation) can drive?!

Surely it's essential due to health and safety of all on the roads that they can read road signage? It's awesome they can do this but it's sort of worried me to, as inevitably this could prove hazardous if they misinterpret a sign like a diversion, stop sign, motorway information signs etc?

I loved this programme as like all of you would love to know how the tutors did it. I have a teaching qualification and would love to help support adult literacy.

I would really like to know, how much the interventions would have cost in real life, especially as so many prison inmates and young offenders have low literacy levels.

I wanted to see some of the lessons as well, and to hear from the younger people what it was the tutors did differently to their school teachers, since school was in their fairly recent past. (I mean, apart from the obvious one-on-one stuff, though am assuming that some individual attention would have been allocated to those people at school, if they attended?)

I did think some of it was quite oddly-conceived, though I mean, I find exam room situations insanely stressful, and I'm highly literate and have a PhD, so I would have said it was causing unnecessary stress to make the people do the tests in a very trad exam room set-up. Likewise the acting and the spelling bee I can think of quite a few fluently, literate, averagely-confident people who would have struggled with both of those purely on the grounds of nerves/self-consciousness.

Lots of it was obviously done with the purpose of creating tear-jerking moments for the cameras. I would have much preferred to see more of the actual lessons - 500 hours in total was mentioned! And from the few seconds' worth we saw in passing, it appeared that each participant had their own personal tutor.

It would be really interesting to see what approach each tutor took, given that all the participants had different needs and abilities.

I thought that was unkind too, a spelling bee, an exam condition test on the first day, but then I thought that maybe being challenged like that and covering up those awful school memories with fresh positive new ones might make sense.
There was a programme ages ago with a nice male teacher who helped people learn to read, and it was really interesting seeing the techniques they used (not that I can remember them now!).
I would love to learn how to help people in this position, I wonder where you'd start.

I found the programme fascinating. My DS (12) is severely dyslexic. Thankfully DS can read but that’s due to a high level of support from an amazing 1-1 TA, it was a case of his having the right person to help at the right time.
I too would have been very interested to see the methods used.

Codebreakers were involved by the looks of it, but I don't know how their system works.
From what I saw they seemed to use lots of cardboard letters, but there must have been more to it than that.

Fantastic program. They were all so
let down by their schooling .
All the tutors were female , I wonder why?

My friend was one of the tutors on this show! She works full-time with adults with learning disabilities, so she does a lot of this kind of stuff. Next time I see her I'll ask her about it.

I work in a prison with low level learners. We used the Toe by Toe book system a lot. My happiest memory is helping a prisoner who was a non reader and very angry eventually take part in Storybook Dads. He read a book to his child, it was recorded and sent out. I tried to make my own resources as for some adult learners - the storybooks are too babyish.
I made basic word books using prison slang and scenarios.

@MellieNelba why does it happen? Are they dyslexic too like in the programme? I'm interested in why it happens. I just can't understand how you can get through life with such low level of reading

About 30% of prisoners have dyslexia but about 60% have general literacy and numeracy difficulties. Many of the men I work never finished full time education - in fact most seem to disappear about Year 9 through truancy, crime, illness and entering young offenders. There are educated clever men in prison but I work with the ones who struggle.
Many of the men don’t want to attend education and would prefer to work in the prison workshops saying they have got by in life okay- some think they are too old to learn or have had such a bad experience before.

I really enjoyed it, I had tears and cheers. I would really liked to have learned more of the techniques employed. This could be great television, people learning about people learning.

I would watch and take part and donate to charities involved. Anything to stop shit like TOWIE and Love Island.

It really makes you realise how important those early years are at school when they learn to read. I worked with a year 3 class for a while (7 years old) and already some of the boys had switched off. As soon as they realise that their peers are reading better than they are they seem to give up and decide that reading is lame. Schools really need a decent budget for creative and exciting interventions to make sure these little ones have the foundations right before they move up the school.

Feel like the programme was missing some vital component by not telling you how they did it. Clearly the kind of people who watch this programme are interested in that.