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ACN: 081 858 344 |
History of Christina's educational materials Failure of dyslectic children of all potentials to reach their mental age in the basic subjects, despite support, led Christina to question the efficacy of conventional general and remedial teacher training and early childhood and remedial programmes offered in western countries where VAKT (simultaneous stimulus of visual, auditory, kinesthetic and tactile senses) is largely restricted to the severely intellectually impaired. Especially perturbing to her was the predominance, even saturation, of the Sight of Whole Language method, and its modified form, Reading Recovery. These exclude an average of 25% of dyslectic students - those with low level processing difficulties - though the primary condition was described by neurologist Rudolf Berlin in the 1870s. The distress and plight of dyslectic students with limited futures for lack of development of the basic subjects, caused Christina's career to change to 'dyslexia consultant' after nine years of lecturing and teaching. Straight away she found a lack of challenging, fun materials that did not patronise and that enabled independent processing of new words encountered, including polysyllabic ones, which were designed to accommodate VAKT method. Instead she found a plethora of high-interest-low-reading-age materials adapted out of copyright classics or new work with small, easy vocabulary and short statement sentences, many themed for teens with reading ages of 6-8 years and only Look and Say for beginner readers in early childhood. So she determined to try to create works to fill the gap - with much doubt and trepidation - designed for the needs of a clientele with an age range of about 4-70 years. The Banana Books (no connection with Heinemann's little readers), published by Turkey Tracks Press, emerged after clients pressured the author to publish the materials because they worked and often displace amphetamines (much hyperactive behaviour being born of failure and frustration), so that others, especially children in the outback using distance learning, could have access. Acknowledgements A number of contributors helped ensure all the Banana Books were produced to a quality standard. **The Big Fat Beaut Book The Times Tables Tape, which forms part of The Big Fat Beaut Book, features baroque music and a serialised story. The handwriting supplement was thanks to Barbara Nichol. The Numeracy cover was designed by Ian Ottley with text illustrations and calligraphy by Armin Greder. The Literacy cover and text illustrations were by Ian Ottley with calligraphy by Ian Ottley and Kay Blackwell. In Users' and Teachers' Guide to Christina's Remedial Teaching Materials for Learning Difficulties, the cover was designed by Armin Greder with a series of graphs by Christopher Alexander. The Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities (ITPA) was included with permission from Samuel and Winifred Kirk. **Posters Large text set of 4 posters featured calligraphy by Kay Blackwell and Alan McCarroll. Drawings in both the large and small colour posters were by Ian Ottley with colour by Armin Greder. **Teaching Disabilities The cover and charcoal series after Goya and linear cartoons by Armin Greder. The preface article 'Literacy in Peril' by the late Max Harris was used with permission from 'Max Harris Writings'. Article first appeared in The Australian as one of his Saturday 'Browsing' columns. **A Dyslexia Consultant's Mailbag Cover and cartoons were by Francesca Van Der Meer. The cartoon, 'Dyslectic's Skateboard Ride', was by Rose Lewis. **A Boodle of Doodles The cover of the manual was designed by Armin Greder. The art and craft work (e.g. screen printing, lettering, ticket-writing, embroidery and boodle-sewing) was by Francesca Van Der Meer. In the Talking Book Reader, the Bob Bunyip's Box of Words poem was read to baroque music. The cover was by Ian Ottley and Armin Greder and the illustrations were by Sue Wright. Research and Development was assisted by teenage group SPECTRUM auspiced by The Gifted and Talented Association (Queensland) who also contributed financially. The animal cartoons were by Christina Alexander. **Zany The cover was Ian Ottley and Armin Greder with drawings by Ian Ottley and calligraphy by Ian Ottley and Kay Blackwell.
Intense searches for materials worldwide through catalogues, book shops and experts in the field yielded nothing that I had not seen fail in primary, secondary and tertiary situations. This I refused to use on already failing and disillusioned students of all ages. Procrastination was out. Colleagues who kept in touch were worried. "You'll HAVE to use the stuff in shops. We KNOW it doesn't work but there's nothing else. What you are seeking doesn't exist" they all said. They were right about there being no stuff to meet the need. They were wrong about my HAVING to use it. I refused to use useless 'dumb-down', and therefore had to invent my own. I did so. It was very time-consuming and exhausting and expensive. I had to be self-funded to the tune of half a million dollars because the publishers are doing nicely on the 'dumb-down' and the market, including teacher trainers and their product the teachers, are, like my ex-colleagues, of the opinion that though it's no good there's nothing else so, Catch 22. It took my career, my security and many years, to devise intervention materials to cover three levels of difficulty in numeracy and literacy. This had to be tested at coal-face level. If their school reports did not register great improvements then I'd starve or go back into the system, convinced at last that nothing could be done and my colleagues and the publishers of books of the simple, one syllable, short statement sentence type, with pictures revealing the storyline, were as good as could be expected. I am glad to be able to tell you that the emergent Banana Books (not Heinemann's little readers) by me, and published by Turkey Tracks Press have been distributed worldwide since 1981 and will be mass-produced overseas for more general distribution. If the simple instructions are followed by somebody close for the word and number sections, all users of normal intelligence can realise potential if only 3Rs weakness is hindering this. When teacher trainers teach preservice teachers about applications of multisensory method as well as methodology or abstract theory, developing the basic subjects - especially with family liaison - will be easier, and dyslectics will largely merge with the mainstream in those areas according to their mental ages. Via informal replies to correspondence (see A Dyslexia Consultant's Mailbag), the fine details and trade secrets are all be laid bare, sans 'edumacational' guff! The following educational materials, published by Turkey Tracks Press, are ideal for children, teenagers and adults with learning disabilities. Many of the resources include guidelines and instructions for dyslexia consultants, teachers and parents. They are available for sale via the Shop. |
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