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Print to help learners

The Story of the Months

In 12 Help-Yourself-to-Read modes
that can be printed off or down-loaded

NOTE: 1. Change fonts to whatever suits your learners; the font and sizes used here are simply to be accessible to all browsers.

NOTE 2. Check in your Print Preview that each of the 12 Months is on a separate page.

See instructions at the end of this page, for how to use these stories to best effect

The Calendar set here is actually a demonstration of twelve modes of 'making print more interesting'.Each mode should also be read applied separately to a whole story or nonfiction piece, so that their messages are clear and not confused by too much variety at once.

The Help Yourself to Read modes illustrated here are:

1. January - The most common words are marked as 'sight words'. They make up almost half the words in any text. Know these common words, and see how much you can read already!
2. February - Long words are split up for easier decoding and putting together.
3. March - Nouns are hi-lighted, to help make sentence structure clearer.
4. April - Verbs hi-lighted, to help make sentence structure clearer.
5. May - The letters not used in reading are in smaller grey print.
6. June - 'Spelling traps' are hi-lighted. 'Silent e' that shows how to pronounce a long vowel before it is not marked.
7. July - Size-training - a story in print that gradually gets smaller.
8. August - Vocabulary clues - difficult words are given meanings to define them as part of the text itself, rather than needing a dictionary to look up, which can be bothersome and often avoided.
9. September - Multilevel story on the same page, so that weak readers can discover how to read more difficult text, and better readers can look back if they are finding the harder text too much - and nobody in a mixed ability class knows who is reading at which level.
10. October - Spelling clues provided for words with irregular spellings.
11. November - Spelling patterns. See what other words you can add with the same spelling patterns, and see if you can fill in the blanks.
12. December - Vowels hi-lighted to show word structure. Plain spellings in red, tricky spellings in blue
13. 'Thirty days has September' - 12 Months in phrases

January

The most common words are marked as 'sight words' that make up almost half the words in any text.

Know them, and see how much you can read alredy! See how much a beginner knows already.

 

The 'old 'Romans 'had 'a 'god 'called 'Janus, 'with 'two 'faces 'and 'a 'key 'in 'his 'left 'hand. 'One 'face 'looked back 'at 'the 'old 'year, 'and 'one 'face' looked 'forward 'to the 'new 'year. 'Janus 'was 'the 'god 'of 'Be-ginn-ings and Ends. 'His 'tem-ple 'was 'kept 'o-pen 'during 'war 'and 'was shut 'in 'times 'of 'peace. If a Roman wanted to begin a matter well, or to make a good end of it, they asked Janus for help. Janus was the door-keeper of the Roman heaven, and he was the god of their doors and gates too. His temple had twelve doors to it, just as the year has twelve months.

The month of January is a time to look back to the past, and also a time to look forward to the future,'with what the past can bring to it.

February

- a story with long words already split up for easier decoding and putting together again.

Feb-rua-ry is the sec-ond month.

Once it was the last month in the

year. Then it was made the second

month, then it be-came the last one

a-gain, and now it is back to be-ing

the second month again. It has only

twen-ty - eight days, but every fourth

year is a Leap Year, and then

February has an ex-tra day, and is

twenty-nine days. So February is

the most rest-less and un-set-tle-d

month in the cal-en-dar.

The Ro-mans had a fest-i-val called

Feb-rua, a time for clean-ing and

pur-i-fy-ing. How-ev-er, they al-so

cel-e-brate-d it by over-eat-ing.

March

- a story with nouns distinguished, to help make sentence structure clearer.

March 'is 'named 'after 'Mars, 'the 'Roman 'god 'of 'war. 'His 'chariot 'was 'drawn by two horses 'named 'Terror 'and 'Flight, 'and 'lightning 'played 'around 'his helmet.

The Romans thought he was more than a fighter - he was so strong. They prayed to him for rain, and asked him about their private affairs. Before a battle, they fed his sacred chickens. If the chickens were hungry, the soldiers said that it meant that Mars would help them. If the chickens did not want to eat, they were afraid that Mars was not on their side.

April

- a story with verbs distinguished, to help make sentence structure clearer.

April 'was 'not 'a 'god 'or

goddess. 'She 'was 'the 'spirit 'of

Spring.

In the Old World in the North,

the month of April begins the

spring -time. The spirit of April

opened the spring- time.

After the cold northern winter,

the earth wakes and the buds

come out on the trees and the

birds sing.

May

The letters that are not used or sounded in reading are set in smaller grey print.

 The Roman goddess Maia was

the daughter of Atlas. The giant Atlas was supposed to bear the weight of the earth on his shoulders, with all its mountains and seas.

His seven daughters lived on a mountain, until the father of the gods set them together as stars in the sky, in a cluster called the Pleiades.

Maia was the mother of Mercury, who ran swiftly from heaven to earth on winged feet with messages for the gods and goddesses, and who is still the emblem of international communication.

Because he ran around so quickly, the metal quicksilver is named Mercury after him.

June -

a story with 'spelling traps' hi-lighted. 'Silent e' is not hi-lighted if it shows how to pronounce a long vowel before it

Some 'people 'say 'that 'June 'is 'named 'after 'the 'Roman 'goddess 'Juno, 'the 'Queen 'of 'their 'gods.
Others say that June 'is named after a man named Junius.

Juno was the beautiful and jealous wife of the King of the Roman gods, Jupiter.

She drove about in a chariot pulled by

wonderful peacocks.

Junius was a proud man who does not

deserve to have a month named after him.

June is the start of the summer of the North and the start of winter in the South.

July

- a story in print that gradually gets smaller, to help acclimatize to reading smaller print.

July 'is 'named 'after 'the 'great 'Roman ruler Julius 'Caesar. 'He 'named 'the

month of July after himself when he set out to reform the calendar. 'Julius Caesar was a great law-maker,writer and soldier. When he set out to reform the calendar, he made the
fifth month into the seventh month. As
the fifth month was called Quintilis, which meant
the fifth, the name did not fit any more when
it became the seventh. Julius Caesar was born
in the seventh month, so he said it should be named
after himself. Nobody else has yet got around
to re-naming September, October,
November or December
after themselves.
Yet.

Why not?

August

- Clues to vocabulary. Difficult words are given meaning to define them as part of the text itself, rather than needing a dictionary to look up, which can be bothersome and easily not done at all.

Julius 'Caesar, 'the 'ruler 'of 'Rome, 'had 'a 'relative, 'the grand-son of his sister, who was called Octavius. When Octavius became ruler of Rome after him, and made himself Emperor of the Roman Empire, the people wanted to honour and show they admired him.

So they called him Augustus, meaning noble, fine and splendid.

Then they called the eighth month August after him, which also delighted and pleased Augustus.

August was the month when he had been made an official consul, a step on his way to power as ruler.

August was also the month when he ended his wars to gain power, and when he won a battle to conquer and master Egypt - and Cleopatra.

September

- Story with multi-levels on the same page, so that weak readers can discover how to read more difficult text, and better readers can look back if they are finding the harder text too much - and nobody in a mixed ability class knows who is reading at which level.

September is the 9th month. But its name means seven. Once it was the 7th month,Septem. Then it was changed to the 9th month but its name was not changed.

September is the ninth month in the calendar - and yet its name means seven. It used to be the seventh month, Septem, and then its place was changed but not its name. Nobody gave it another name, not even their own name, and so the silly name has stuck. September is the ninth month in the calendar - and yet its name means seven. It used to be the seventh month, Septem, but then its place was changed. And nobody changed the name, not even to take the glory of giving it their own name. So the odd discrepancy remains. (Sometimes a boy is named Septimus because he is the seventh child, or because he was born in September. Perhaps some seventh children have been born in September too. Then they could be called Septimus for a double reason!)

October

- Spelling clues for reading

November - spelling patterns

See what other words you can add with the same spelling patterns, and see if you can fill in the blanks.

December

Vowels are hi-lighted to show word structure. Plain spellings are in red, tricky spellings in blue.

 December 'means 'ten, 'as 'in 'decimal 'numbers 'and decimate (killing 'off 'one 'in 'ten).

Now December is the twelfth month!

If you could name the last month of the year, what name would you give it?

Shoppers' Delight?

Festive Month?

Givingtime?

Year's End?

Dozen-ber?

 

Making print more interesting
The 12 months of the year
in phrases to make it easier to see the sense of the text.

Thirty 'days 'has 'September, 'April, 'June

and 'November. '

All 'the 'rest 'have 'thirty-one,

except for February alone,

and that has twenty-eight days clear,

and twenty-nine

in each Leap year.

Thirty days has September, April, June and November. All the rest have thirty-one, except for February alone, and that has twenty-eight days clear, and twenty-nine in each Leap year.

I hope you have had a lot of fun with all this. val yule

Instructions: How to read 12 months of interesting print

Who: For older learners of literacy, remedial students and upper primary school.

How: For reading with someone else, but you in charge. These instructions are important. Someone else can read them to you.

1. First, the Learner (you) look over the 13 pages, to see what they are like.

2. For each month's story, someone else does the reading while you run a biro-end under the words and pause at words you know and read them out, then the someone-else goes straight on.

3. If you are reading well, then you can do the reading, and pause with the biro-end when you can't read a word. The other reader immediately reads that word, and then you GO STRAIGHT ON, without repeating that word. That way, the sense of the piece is not lost by repetition and stumbling.

4. If you are having trouble with most words, the other reader can often help with giving the beginning or all the sounds of the easiest words, so you can hear how the sounds blend into the words.

5. After each month's story, you ask one question at least of the other reader. It can be about the story or the words or the spelling or anything, but it has to be at least one question. The learner asks the questions - not the teacher or the other reader.

6. At the end, when the helper is not there, read alone thru the whole Reading Print piece with all the stories of the months set out plainly, and underlines all the words that you can now read. (Stop every time you need a break.)

7. Later the helper can help with all the words that could not be read easily. You could then read the whole set together again in the same ways as before, stopping when you feel like it.

8. Then you can underline more words that can be read - until it is all underlined. Practising re-reading is a good way to develop fluent reading habits.

Let's know how you get on and any good ideas that you have.

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