A creative approach to supporting literacy acquisition for a young man with difficulties

This chapter describes a case study of the design, implementation and evaluation of personalised provision made for one young man. Concerns had been raised about him by both teaching staff and parents, the most serious of which were writing and illegibility when reading back, retention of information as a result of slow pace, the young man’s disaffection from classroom activities, and his seeming inability to engage with staff about his difficulties in literacy acquisition. None of the attempts to help him, including provision of a laptop for use in class, had been successful. In order to support the young man it was determined by the special educational needs co-ordinator (SENCo) that, in order to move forward productively and effectively, the initial task was to help the student ‘find his voice’. Once she had found a way to do this through the use of a projective interview technique, ‘Talking stones’ (Wearmouth, 2004) he was able to verbalise his specific needs and interests and, in doing so, enabled the SENCo’s team to help him find a creative and effective solution to overcome his barriers to literacy learning and achievement in other curriculum areas also.