The Project Team |
Identity |
Involvement |
Dartington Social Research Unit |
Dr. Nick Axford |
Research - Assistant Project Director (2006 - 2008) |
Think2Read/Transferable Thinking Power(Drawstring Partnerships Ltd) |
Donna Thomson
Ruth Nixey
Elspeth Graham |
Think2Read/Transferable Thinking Power Project Developer/ Director/ Trainer
Assistant Project Developer Think2Read (2005 - 2006)
Assistant Project Developer/Director Think2read/Transferable Thinking Power (2007 onwards) |
Exeter University |
Dr. Ros Fisher |
Research - Project Director (2008 - 2009) |
Devon Education Services } |
National Strategy Team
Curriculum and Professional Development |
Courses and publication (2007 - 2011)
Funding (2006 - 2009) |
Dartington Primary School |
Bea Gill |
Host School - Literacy Co-ordinator & Project School Liaison - RiO/Think2Read/TTP Enquiry (2007 - 2011) |
Totnes Federation of Schools Including:
- Kings Edward XI School
- Bidwell Brook Special School
- Dartington Primary School |
Jill Bruley |
Cross-Phase Comprehension Project Manager
(2006 -2007) |
Creative Partnerships (RIO) Arts Council |
Ed Whitelaw
Karen Abadie
Tony Gee - Laboratory of Imagination, Moveable Feast Team |
RiO 3-Year Enquiry/Change Schools Project - Funding for Think2Read/TTP pilot in Dartington Primary School (2007 - 2011)
RiO Development Officer
RiO Creative Agent
Creative Partner - RiO/Think2read Enquiry(2008-2011) |
Donna Thomson
Think2Read & Transferable Thinking Power (founder member).
Project Director/researcher/author.
Head of Drawstring Partnerships Ltd (Parent company of TheThink2Read Project and Transferable Thinking Project)
Co-author of “Quick Fix for Year Six – Comprehension”, 2007 (Scholastic),
author of the ‘'T2R Comprehension
(Thinking Skills) Assessment”, 2008
(Devon Education Services), co-author of ''Comprehension Literacy Skills Years 1 - 6'', 2009 (Scholastic) and
co-author of the Nelson Comprehension Teaching and Assessment Series - Years 1 - 6, 2009 (Nelson Thornes)
Donna has an Education degree and nine years experience as a primary literacy specialist supporting children with learning difficulties.
In 2001 she identified a crisis in comprehension that she believed to be undermining the social, oral, reading, writing and personal learning development of many children in the UK during their most formative years of learning.
In 2005, following five years of extensive research as a member of the Dartington Primary School team in Devon, she produced a comprehension programme and corresponding resources with Year 6 colleague Ruth Nixey for KS2. The programme was developed further to include instruction for KS 1 children in 2007 and further resources were written with children's author Elspeth Graham.
The “Quick Fix” resource for Year Six pupils and 'Scholastic Comprehension Literacy Skills ' series, (for Years 1 - 6) provide explicit step-by-step instruction for teachers, that explains in detail how to facilitate a powerful ‘community of comprehension enquiry’ within the classroom. These questioning and responding skills alongside the three essential comprehension strategies of summarizing, prediction and clarification, enables students to not only identify and apply literal, inference and evaluation thinking in pursuit of reading for meaning; but also provides them with thinking skills that can be transferred effectively to other learning situations.
Donna set up the Think2Read Project in 2005 and left her post at Dartington Primary School to devote her full time to developing it as a long-term sustainable project model for other schools across the country to adopt.
Ruth has six years experience working in Key stage 1 and 2 as a primary teacher, and more recently as Literacy Co-ordinator, a member of the Senior Management Leadership Team as a Leading Manager of Dartington Primary School, Devon.
Co-author of “Quick Fix for Year Six – Comprehension”, 2007 (Scholastic),
Ruth Nixey
Primary teacher/author
Project teacher (Year 6)
Elspeth Graham
Children's writer
Assistant Project Developer - T2R/TTP
Elspeth studied Law at Exeter University before going
on to qualify as a teacher. She first began writing books for
children in 1992.
Co-author - ''Comprehension Literacy Skills Years 1 - 6''
Consultant for the Nelson Comprehension Teaching and
Assessment Series - Years 1 - 6, 2009 (Nelson Thornes).
Author - Collins Educational, KS1 and KS2. Co-author - Oxford Literacy Web Reading Scheme KS1 Co-author - Oxford Literacy Web Anthologies and
Teacher’s Guides KS2 (and Year 2).
Elspeth also writes non-fiction books for KS1 and KS2 and co-writes long-text picture books for Walker Books and Candlewick Press (USA) with Mal Peet.
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Think2Read Comprehension Project (Phase 2), 2007 - 2011
in association with Dartington Primary School and Creative Partnerships
(Arts Council England)
Host School for Think2ReadProject |
|
Head teacher
Jill Mahon
Dartington Primary School caters for over 40 students. It is a DfES federated school,
Training school and part of a networked learning Community, The school employs a large number of support and assistant staff to enable flexible and innovative approaches to primary and nursery education. At the core of their vision and work is the central belief in the integrity of the individual, knowledge of what pupils need to learn and their relationship with the wider community. |
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Literacy co-ordinator and Project Lead Teacher
Bea Gill |
The Evaluators
Program Pilot Evaluation 2008 - 2010 |
|
Associate Professor of Language and Literacy Education
Dr Ros Fisher
On leaving university she taught in primary schools in the north-west of England and USA. She writes widely about the teaching of literacy and has researched the role of the teacher, and teacher change in current large-scale initiatives to change the teaching of literacy in England. Recent books include Inside the Literacy Hour (Routledge, 2002) and edited the collection of papers from an ESRC funded research seminar series Raising Standards in Literacy (Falmer, 2002).
_______________________________________________ |
Dartington Primary School (Change School) in partnership with the Think2Read Project and the Real Ideas Organisation (Creative Partnerships) 2008 - 2011
Creative Partnerships is the
Government’s flagship creative
learning programme, designed to
develop the skills of young people
across England, raising their
aspirations and equipping them for
their futures. We foster innovative,
long-term partnerships between
schools and creative professionals,
including architects, scientists,
multimedia developers and artists.
These partnerships inspire young people, teachers and creative professionals to challenge how they work and experiment with new ideas.
Young people develop the skills they need to perform well not only in exams and extra-curricular activities, but also in the workplace and wider society. |
_____________________________________
2006 - 2008
Dartington Social Research Unit was founded in 1963 by Royston Lambert in King’s College Cambridge, moving to Dartington in 1968. It conducts scientific research about child development in the context of children’s services, with a view to informing needs-led, evidence-based interventions for children in need.
The Unit’s primary objective is to contribute to demonstrably improved outcomes for children in need. Specifically its aims are:
- to conduct high quality scientific research that is theoretically and methodologically innovative
- to make research results available to those implementing policy
- to disseminate findings in a lively and interesting way
- to encourage others to replicate its studies and to help practitioners and managers in children’s services to do their own research
The Unit is part of the Warren House Group at Dartington, a set of activities concerned with research and development in children’s services. In addition to the Unit, the group comprises Dartington-i (a service development organisation operating in England, Spain and the US), DeMo (a communication design studio), Centre for Social Policy (for senior or retired researchers and policy-makers), and Warren House Press (a publications enterprise).
The Unit also has strong links with a network of research centres around the world. Its PhD programme operates through the Universities of Bath and Exeter.Dartington Social Research Unit is one of five activities that make up the Warren House Group. The Warren House Group at Dartington is a Company limited by guarantee registered in England. (Company Number 04610839) and a registered charity (Charity number 1099202).
Think2Read & The Comprehension Cross-phase Journey
Primary, Special School and Secondary
__________________________________________
Crossphase Comprehension Thinking Skills Project 2006 – 2007
Building creative and critical reading, writing and thinking power through language, meaning and enquiry.
Think2Read Project in association with Totnes Federation of Schools.
Jill Bruley
Totnes Federation Co-ordinator
Federation Consultant
As a Theatre Director, drama specialist, and Consultant in Literacy through Drama, Jill is particularly interested in how inference and communication are developed through Drama. She believes that the Think2Read Project is developing ‘an extremely exciting and much needed reading thinking skills programme’ that underpins the curriculum objectives across all the school Key stages, because it offers students of all ages and abilities an understanding of how to apply their thinking more meaningfully and enthusiastically to engage in reading and learning in general. She believes that the Federation of schools will promote a working liaison and partnership with groups of schools that will help to encourage consistent teaching methods in thinking skills practice - using the Think2Read Project as a model across all phases ( primary, secondary and special schools).
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Pilton Community College Comprehension Project (Reading in 3D) in association with The Think2Read Project 2007 - 2008
“Inspirational!”… “Successful and enjoyable”… “The best day’s training I’ve ever had!” These were just some of the positive comments fed back to Ric Nowik after the ‘Reading in 3D’ conference, hosted by the Pilton Cross-Phase Literacy group.
This innovative project was inspired by the group’s discovery of a successful approach to developing students’ reading skills across all age ranges, abilities and subjects. Representatives from Pilton Community College, Pilton Infants, Pathfield Special School and Pilton Bluecoat Junior Scgool found that they shared a common concern with developing understanding and true comprehension, rather than simply teaching decoding.
Creativity was the keynote. The project aimed to widen the concept of reading to embrace music, drama, art and movement. Engaging students in pre-reading tasks proved essential to creating an exciting backdrop, while drama and dance were used as enjoyable exploratory tools to extend their personal responses. In order to develop the vital skills of inference and evaluation, students were made aware of the processes they go through when reading, and how they create meaning from any kind of text - picture, music or print.
Photo to be supplied |
Head of English, Pilton Community College
Ric Nowik
. |
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Background - Company Directors
Drawstring Partnerships Ltd
Creative learning… expanding minds
Donna Thomson - Executive Director, Drawstring Partnerships Limited
Drawstring was set up by Donna Thomson in September, 2006 to provide a literacy research service for school communities. Drawstring offers effective solutions from outcomes of educational research e.g., teaching programmes, resources, assessments, educational advice and training. The aim of the directors is to assist creative teaching practice and enable young people between the ages of 4-16 to have access to appropriate support and innovative learning opportunities. It is hoped that this will help them to realise their capacity to believe in and fulfil their own potential as individuals and members of society.
Drawstring Partnerships Ltd. (limited company by guarantee with two directors and a company secretary) and its subsidiary, The Think2Read Project (set up in 2005 and currently in the process of applying for CIC status), are a product of Donna’s years of research and development whilst a member of the teaching team at Dartington Primary School, (2001 – 2005) and since she left to work on the
project full-time.
Elspeth Graham
Drawstring Partnership Director
Children’s Writer
Elspeth studied Law at Exeter University before going on to qualify as a teacher. She is passionate about children's books and has a particular love of illustration. She believes that all children have talents and she despairs of educational systems that allow children to see themselves as failures.
Elspeth has been writing material with Donna Thomson for the 'Think2Read' programme since 2007 and more recently for the Drawstring Partnership's 'Transferable Thinking Power' project. She co-wrote ''Comprehension Literacy Skills Years 1 - 6'', 2009 (Scholastic) with Donna and was a consultant for the Nelson Comprehension Teaching and Assessment Series - Years 1 - 6, 2009 (Nelson Thornes).
She first began writing books for children in 1992 and has written reading scheme books for Collins educational, KS1 and KS2. She was a core writer for the Oxford Literacy Web Reading Scheme KS1 and was joint writer (with award-winning author Mal Peet) of the Oxford Literacy Web Anthologies and Teacher’s Guides KS2 (and Year 2). She writes non-fiction books for KS 1 and KS 2 and also co-writes long-text picture books for Walker Books and Candlewick Press (USA) with Mal Peet.
Lin Harborth
Drawstring Partnership Director
Former Social Worker & Lecturer /Programme Leader of Childcare and Education, Currently Community Personal Adviser for Connexions
Lin has a passionate interest in Childcare and Development and has enjoyed the rewards and challenges of working with young people who have complex problems.
“I believe there is much to learn from children and young people who can teach us a great deal about life, learning and progress. I very much believe in the Carl Rogers approach to a ‘ Freedom to learn’ in a stimulating, safe, unbiased environment whereby we may facilitate one another's learning”.
Jane Ray
Drawstring Partnership Director
Former BBC Radio 4 Producer
BBC Head of Compliance
Jane is an award winning programme maker with more than 20 years
of BBC experience, primarily at Radio 4. She currently works as
the Head of Compliance for Global Channels. This means she is
responsible for the editorial standards of 15 BBC channels round
the world.
She has also struggled all her life with dyslexia and has two children with the condition. She therefore cares deeply about improving the
lot of children who struggle with the written word. She lives in a
colourful but draughty house in North London with her family, two cats
and a permanent failure to 'de clutter'.
