Open Writing

Every Tuesday and Thursday, at the local Primary School, it's 'Granny Reading' time. Four people from the Peninsula Club Retirement Village go to the local Primary School to listen to children reading aloud.

The first time I went I was nervous, having listened to one of the residents who drives school buses complain about the children's bad behaviour on buses in Rodney. So I was prepared for rowdy, mischievous, bad-mannered children.

A teacher had prepared a programme, with four lists of the children's names for each 'Granny'. Once two children had arrived, the first one finished was supposed to go back and tell the next two to come and wait their turn.

We tried this, but we wasted so much time asking for their names, and dividing the children among the four of us, that we decided the plan wasn't going to work satisfactorily, and ended up taking them as they arrived.

The children's reading ability amazed me. It seemed to me that the majority read very well. There were about five or six children who struggled with some words, but most of them seemed to be good readers.

I had listened to the stories from the other 'Grannies', who all seemed to have met with some small rebellion. One had a boy who refused to read, and sat with his arms crossed. So she sent him back to his classroom.

One day, another had a little Muslim girl wearing a headscarf, and the 'Granny' felt a little uncomfortable, as she had never spoken to a Muslim before. However, after one term this little girl is now reading well.

She has a brother who comes also. He is very much the one who leads the others; the centre of attention. When he arrives, all the boys look at him and try to attract his attention. Sometimes he reads well, other days he reads slowly, other days he pretends he doesn't know words, or so I believe. But I say nothing.

Every Granny wants him for reading, so they can take surreptitious glances at his eyelashes, which are long, black, thick, and curly. We all covet his eyelashes.

For the last two weeks, I have had a boy who will not sit down. He gets onto a chair and squats, and reads the story to me from this position. Any attempt to get him to sit is met with, 'No! I always read like this.'

I have no way of knowing if this is so, unless I check with his teacher; but I decide not to bother. I let him straddle the chair, while I hold the book.

'Can you see?' I ask. He wears glasses.

'Yes, I can see!' He then stands up on the floor, and I find it difficult to see the words. I wear glasses too.

The boy with the eyelashes can read upside down. If he is waiting, sitting opposite, he tells them the words before I can say anything; so I ask him to move to another chair.

They like to do plays from the School Journals. He says, 'I'll be him, him, him and him.'

I say, 'Hey, what about somebody else getting a choice.' He looks at me baffled, as if he hadn't met this reaction from anybody else. Then he sulks and barely mouths his parts.

My favourite is a girl who makes me laugh. She tells me things about the story. She says, 'We have fun, don't we?' And we do. For two weeks she is missing. Then last Thursday she bounced in and said, 'Here I am, I'm back.'

'Where have you been?' I asked.

Sometimes they come in puffing and red-faced. They have been to 'jumpjams', which is dancing in the hall. I saw this at a concert the school put on to raise money. It is very energetic. I think that if they do this regularly, they will never grow fat and contribute to the child obesity problem developing in this country. Every school should do 'jumpjams' as a compulsory exercise every day.

My only disappointment with 'Granny Reading' is that I don't get to hear how the stories develop and how they end, as the children only have ten minutes each. I find this frustrating. Sometimes I take the book from them, and read the last page, which is not something I'd ever do with a book I'm reading myself.

© Shirley Henwood