READING FOR RASCALS

To provide an alternative program for boys (mainly) who are struggling to achieve literacy in the conventional school environment.

Windy Ridge Boys Farm is the new venue where Literacy campaigner Graham Crawshaw continues his work to improve literacy rates in New Zealand. Graham and his wife Joan first developed farm stays for city boys on their farm in Arapohue in 1962. In 1978 Graham developed a phonics based literacy program. Here, hundreds of children who have struggled at school with their literacy have come to not only learn stuff like phonics, but to also learn bush survival and generally be a kid again in what Graham fondly referred to as 'an OSH-free environment'! Imagine the leg up provided by getting youngsters over this hurdle.

Because statistics show that youth delinquency and adult imprisonment are often correlated with poor literacy levels, our mission is to raise awareness and offer the successful program that we have developed to more children and adults in Auckland and Northern regions. Graham has been awarded the Queen Service Medal in 2003 for his lifelong campaign to restore literacy for all.

Positive Conversations Are Vital To Children

positive conversation is a medicine to heal a child's low self-esteem, a road map to fi nd a place called, "their ideal learning zone" and a toolbox to repair years of frustration and anger (mostly but not exclusively) in boys written-off by New Zealand's education system. "Positive conversations are indispensable to everyone, young or old," says Crawshaw. He wants all adults first of all to make the effort to converse with children, and secondly to do it in such a way as to draw them out, rather than bogging them down with details. Crawshaw says conversation with children takes hard work and application, but adults who learn the art can hugely icrease both a child's confi dence and knowledge, and their own as well.
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Back To Basics At Boys Farm

If your child is having trouble at school, going back to basics might be 
just what he needs.
Literacy campaigner Graham Crawshaw has established a farm in Windy Ridge 
near Warkworth to help boys "regain their boyhood", while improving their 
literacy skills.
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Turning Illiteracy Around

The other kids in class get what the teacher is explaining you don't.

 The other kids move on you stay behind.

 The other kids have prospects you seem damned.

Failing at literacy affects over one-quarter* of New Zealanders. It brings that kind of quiet panic, a terror of not knowing what the teacher is talking about, a terror many of us have felt during the low points of our schooling. But what if that feeling of inferiority is sustained on a daily basis?
Literacy Or Delinquency?
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A History Of A Campaign

......and a passion to see literacy rates improve in NZ
As news reports all too frequently remind us, an increasing number of boys 
are being referred to health professional by their parents and teachers 
because of their disruptive behaviour and poor literacy rates. Its a 
message that comes as no surprise to Graham Crawshaw.........
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The Look Guess Lady

Reading advocate Graham Crawshaw has for many years "picked up the casualties of the present system of reading instruction" at his reading farmstays for boys and girls. He challenges the many glowing tributes to reading guru Marie Clay that have appeared since her death in April 2007........
...... The scandalous problem of rampant illiteracy has for too long been denied, disguised and explained away by insiders in the training colleges and the elite clique of educationalists who have followed along behind Clarence Beeby and Marie Clay. Their confusing 'look and guess' system of illiteracy is increasingly discredited, and continues to consign the young people who can't cope with it to the scrap heap.
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