For a businesswoman Thelma seems to have a lot of gaps in her knowledge.
Why is she driving miles interviewing travelling girls and wasting her own fuel when they should be coming to her?
Are these girls families paying anything towards their tuition?
If they're not, is she receiving funding from elsewhere.
I can see these girls learning dressmaking skills from Thelma and then starting up in competition. What is Thelma getting out of this?
She was way, way out on her estimates for what the building work would cost. Why?
The Head designer is Thelma's daughter and also her other daughter is her PA. They both look well in their 30s. Then this little Katrina looks about 9 (is that what they said?) Mind you she's a sharp cookie "your coat is too long" (spot on!:D)
Thelma looks way too old to be her natural Mum. I suppose she could have had her on the change, it does happen though.
For a businesswoman Thelma seems to have a lot of gaps in her knowledge.
Yep.. although this could be dramatics for the TV show
Why is she driving miles interviewing travelling girls and wasting her own fuel when they should be coming to her?
Maybe if it was left up to the girls to come all the way to her they would never show.. Even as it was there she got alot less that she was expecting.
Are these girls families paying anything towards their tuition?
If they're not, is she receiving funding from elsewhere.
I speculate Channel 4 paid some money.. part of the shows budget?
I can see these girls learning dressmaking skills from Thelma and then starting up in competition. What is Thelma getting out of this?
If they are behaving like 10 year olds the odds of them starting up any business is unlikely. Or by the time any of them get that good/clued up , Thelma would be retiring anyways.
She was way, way out on her estimates for what the building work would cost. Why?
Dramatics for the show. Despite that and moaning about being skint she still managed to get it all done?
[QUOTE=Hotgossip;59418213
Are these girls families paying anything towards their tuition?
If they're not, is she receiving funding from elsewhere.
[/QUOTE]
I was told once that there was some grants available if you're training young people from underprivileged backgrounds . So she may well be getting some sort of funding for a scheme like that.
I enjoyed this perky for the wee honies on it. The girl in the leather trousers was smoking
They all looked like hookers.
As with "Big Fat Gypsy Weddings" all the young women dress like slappers and have some very strange views.
I gave up watching BFGW because it was pretty much the same every week...
People in and out of prison, no one in proper work yet no one short of money, calling themselves travellers but normally living in council houses or static caravans nowhere near Ireland and no one having had a proper education.
I think that Thelma's plan is a good one, but it should never need to get this far. We shouldn't pander to all this 'cutural identity' stuff when it basically boils down to allowing people to do what ever they want.
Yes she was, shes open about it and talked about it in this episode. She was a single mum and comitted benefit fraud
I was confused here though as they have been together for 18 years?
This would mean they had been together 8 years when she went to jail. I think Thelma is down playing her benefit fraud, they don't send single mothers to jail if they have been claiming benefits while earning a bit of cash in hand money on a market stall for a few months. She must have been doing it for years while living with her partner.
I'm not going to hold it against her as she did her time and seems genuinely remorseful but her story isn't quite as 'poor me' as she tried to make out.
If someone sang the alphabet to me if I was an adult learning to read and write I would throttle them - be interesting to see what happens next week!
I have moved from primary teaching to teaching Literacy to young adults, adults and offenders - believe me, most of them will try anything to improved their skills (if singing works, why not?) and most of them accept as an unfortunate reality that most 'learning to read and write' materials are still written for, and aimed at, primary age students (although there is much more adult-suitable material being published now). I use a spelling programme on computer which is aimed at school age students, but my adults love it too - they love the 'fireworks' on the screen when they get an answer right, they love the feeling of achievement when they can see their score improving. To say that singing the alphabet isn't appropriate you are coming at it from a normal, well-educated, functionally literate point of view. You have to turn things on their head and look at it the other way up!
(But, not having seen the programme, if they're singing the 'old' style "a, b, c, d, e, f, g..." using the letter names, not their phonetic sounds, then it won't be much use. Phonics/the sounds letters make - so "a" as in "apple", "b" as in "banana" etc - is the bedrock of learning to read and write, not letter names)
In my experience, as long as adult students know you 'give a damn' about them they aren't fussy about how you go about teaching them - and that will be Thelma's greatest tool, the fact that she gives a damn enough to do this for them. A prisoner explained it to me once (I was new to this side of things, worried about patronising them) and he said that as long as you care about doing a good job for them, and actually put things into practice and do it with them, then they don't feel patronised - and that includes caring enough to make yourself look a bit silly by singing!
Most students I have, just like Thelma's, have a reason why school didn't work for them (chaotic home life; learning difficulties, often un-diagnosed at the time; frustration becoming bad behaviour to hide it, and then, finally, truancy. And nearly all of them will say to me "I've always been told I was thick". One was so afraid of the process of writing he refused to use a pen - he'd only use a pencil because he could rub it out. And when I showed him a basic dictionary he was so afraid of it he wouldn't touch it at first. It's things like this that their often bad behaviour record is hiding - but all anyone sees is the bad behaviour, and there just isn't the time or the resources to spend getting to the bottom of it in time to stop them truanting and then worse.
But here there are, years later, pleading with me and my colleagues to help them with their letters (as they often put it) and they nearly all say they wish they could have their time again and have a different outcome. Being so literacy deficient is like walking around with an unseen disability - unable to fill in forms to claim benefits (which is what often leads to crime - no forms to fill in), unable to tell the time to get to appointments on time, unable to even read the letter from whoever saying they have an appointment at whatever day and time etc, unable to read letters from their child's school or hear them read etc. For them it's not just a little bit inconvenient, it's hugely debilitating, upsetting and humiliating. Who would want to explain themselves to everyone they meet when they're still at school? They don't, of course - so they hang around with others like them, they truant with them, get into trouble with them... and often no one at home to put the pieces back together.
If they went to school until 11 surely they would know their alphabet!
Apologies if I sound too teacherish (can't help it!) but your point highlights one key question: did they go to school regularly and consistently until the age of 11? Or were they moving around, never in one place long enough to settle in, not exactly encouraged by their parents to see school as important? These things make such a difference.
I said that earlier. I started learning it in infants school aged 5.
Little 'a' and Big 'A'
The other children who have these things do learn these things at age 5 or 6 and move on to older classes building on their experience - but our school systems don't know how to plug the gaps in 8 and 9 year olds (for example) who are still missing the bits they should have learned at age 5. And then, of course, it just compounds until it becomes an unconquerable mountain.
The teachers would of been teaching it for sure.. whether or not they were actually learning it is another story..
Sadly school can only do so much, but if the parents/guardians don't insist on regular attendance and don't support their children by helping them with their reading homework and the like, we're just hitting our heads against a brick wall. The teachers can teach the basics until they're blue in the face in the appropriately-aged classes, but if the back-up isn't in place in terms of attendance (and, with travellers, staying in one place long enough to attend one school for a prolonged period of time as well) and if there is no parental support then you've already lost it by the age of Key Stage 1, as explained above.
Unfortunately there is not enough money in the education budget to pay for 'catch-up' classes for all those who need them - and that's assuming they will attend them and have the aforementioned support at home to make it worthwhile! Added to that, our education system doesn't have the flexibility to allow children to be taught in their ability groups rather than age groups. You move on and up regardless of whether you've achieved the minimum standard or not.
It falls down even more at secondary school, for various reasons, but none of them are pertinent here because generally traveller children only attend school on a nominal basis until they are 11 anyway!
So, without having seen the programme, only read about it, I recognise so many of Thelma's problems, and things like pictures of clocks on the wall showing them the right time to have coffee, lunch etc is certainly a tried and tested method with students who have difficulties in this area. And much of the behaviour she mentions, like the fighting and the neediness, are also extremely common in any student with such poor levels of basic skills. None of this is shocking me, sadly - where I work we have close on 1,500 every year like this, and worse!!!
I have moved from primary teaching to teaching Literacy to young adults, adults and offenders - believe me, most of them will try anything to improved their skills (if singing works, why not?) and most of them accept as an unfortunate reality that most 'learning to read and write' materials are still written for, and aimed at, primary age students (although there is much more adult-suitable material being published now). I use a spelling programme on computer which is aimed at school age students, but my adults love it too - they love the 'fireworks' on the screen when they get an answer right, they love the feeling of achievement when they can see their score improving. To say that singing the alphabet isn't appropriate you are coming at it from a normal, well-educated, functionally literate point of view. You have to turn things on their head and look at it the other way up!
(But, not having seen the programme, if they're singing the 'old' style "a, b, c, d, e, f, g..." using the letter names, not their phonetic sounds, then it won't be much use. Phonics/the sounds letters make - so "a" as in "apple", "b" as in "banana" etc - is the bedrock of learning to read and write, not letter names)
In my experience, as long as adult students know you 'give a damn' about them they aren't fussy about how you go about teaching them - and that will be Thelma's greatest tool, the fact that she gives a damn enough to do this for them. A prisoner explained it to me once (I was new to this side of things, worried about patronising them) and he said that as long as you care about doing a good job for them, and actually put things into practice and do it with them, then they don't feel patronised - and that includes caring enough to make yourself look a bit silly by singing!
Most students I have, just like Thelma's, have a reason why school didn't work for them (chaotic home life; learning difficulties, often un-diagnosed at the time; frustration becoming bad behaviour to hide it, and then, finally, truancy. And nearly all of them will say to me "I've always been told I was thick". One was so afraid of the process of writing he refused to use a pen - he'd only use a pencil because he could rub it out. And when I showed him a basic dictionary he was so afraid of it he wouldn't touch it at first. It's things like this that their often bad behaviour record is hiding - but all anyone sees is the bad behaviour, and there just isn't the time or the resources to spend getting to the bottom of it in time to stop them truanting and then worse.
But here there are, years later, pleading with me and my colleagues to help them with their letters (as they often put it) and they nearly all say they wish they could have their time again and have a different outcome. Being so literacy deficient is like walking around with an unseen disability - unable to fill in forms to claim benefits (which is what often leads to crime - no forms to fill in), unable to tell the time to get to appointments on time, unable to even read the letter from whoever saying they have an appointment at whatever day and time etc, unable to read letters from their child's school or hear them read etc. For them it's not just a little bit inconvenient, it's hugely debilitating, upsetting and humiliating. Who would want to explain themselves to everyone they meet when they're still at school? They don't, of course - so they hang around with others like them, they truant with them, get into trouble with them... and often no one at home to put the pieces back together.
Apologies if I sound too teacherish (can't help it!) but your point highlights one key question: did they go to school regularly and consistently until the age of 11? Or were they moving around, never in one place long enough to settle in, not exactly encouraged by their parents to see school as important? These things make such a difference.
The other children who have these things do learn these things at age 5 or 6 and move on to older classes building on their experience - but our school systems don't know how to plug the gaps in 8 and 9 year olds (for example) who are still missing the bits they should have learned at age 5. And then, of course, it just compounds until it becomes an unconquerable mountain.
Sadly school can only do so much, but if the parents/guardians don't insist on regular attendance and don't support their children by helping them with their reading homework and the like, we're just hitting our heads against a brick wall. The teachers can teach the basics until they're blue in the face in the appropriately-aged classes, but if the back-up isn't in place in terms of attendance (and, with travellers, staying in one place long enough to attend one school for a prolonged period of time as well) and if there is no parental support then you've already lost it by the age of Key Stage 1, as explained above.
Unfortunately there is not enough money in the education budget to pay for 'catch-up' classes for all those who need them - and that's assuming they will attend them and have the aforementioned support at home to make it worthwhile! Added to that, our education system doesn't have the flexibility to allow children to be taught in their ability groups rather than age groups. You move on and up regardless of whether you've achieved the minimum standard or not.
It falls down even more at secondary school, for various reasons, but none of them are pertinent here because generally traveller children only attend school on a nominal basis until they are 11 anyway!
So, without having seen the programme, only read about it, I recognise so many of Thelma's problems, and things like pictures of clocks on the wall showing them the right time to have coffee, lunch etc is certainly a tried and tested method with students who have difficulties in this area. And much of the behaviour she mentions, like the fighting and the neediness, are also extremely common in any student with such poor levels of basic skills. None of this is shocking me, sadly - where I work we have close on 1,500 every year like this, and worse!!!
Very interesting post. Could you tell me what the name of the spelling prog is, which you mention in your first para please?
I enjoyed this perky for the wee honies on it. The girl in the leather trousers was smoking
Indeed, Margaret was hot, Shannon was hot, but the best one, imo, was the one in the denim shorts, long white socks and white hat (Lilyanne ?), well bloody fit she is
I was confused here though as they have been together for 18 years?
This would mean they had been together 8 years when she went to jail. I think Thelma is down playing her benefit fraud, they don't send single mothers to jail if they have been claiming benefits while earning a bit of cash in hand money on a market stall for a few months. She must have been doing it for years while living with her partner.
I'm not going to hold it against her as she did her time and seems genuinely remorseful but her story isn't quite as 'poor me' as she tried to make out.
I agree - a Mum with young children and IF it was a first offence - I just can't see her being sent to prison for that.
She did make it sound almost like a one-off but I think she must have been doing it for a long, long time and BIG money to get a custodial sentence.
Very interesting post. Could you tell me what the name of the spelling prog is, which you mention in your first para please?
Hi, yes it's called "Star Spell". I'm not sure if it's still available, but having used it at work I bought it for my dyslexic daughter to use, and when I bought a one computer edition it only cost about £26. It has already-programmed spelling lists based on key words/learning attainment from KS1 up to KS3 (including subject specific words for KS3) but it also allows you to make your own spelling lists if you have specific words that are causing difficulty. It's not perfect - but no programme is. But I figured if a college with 2,000 16-19yr old students though it worth buying to be networked throughout it's entire computer system it must be worth trying!
Comments
That about sums their lifestyle up.
Mmmmmm!
I only went till quarter to 4
I said that earlier. I started learning it in infants school aged 5.
Little 'a' and Big 'A'
Why is she driving miles interviewing travelling girls and wasting her own fuel when they should be coming to her?
Are these girls families paying anything towards their tuition?
If they're not, is she receiving funding from elsewhere.
I can see these girls learning dressmaking skills from Thelma and then starting up in competition. What is Thelma getting out of this?
She was way, way out on her estimates for what the building work would cost. Why?
The Head designer is Thelma's daughter and also her other daughter is her PA. They both look well in their 30s. Then this little Katrina looks about 9 (is that what they said?) Mind you she's a sharp cookie "your coat is too long" (spot on!:D)
Thelma looks way too old to be her natural Mum. I suppose she could have had her on the change, it does happen though.
The teachers would of been teaching it for sure.. whether or not they were actually learning it is another story..
Yep.. although this could be dramatics for the TV show
Maybe if it was left up to the girls to come all the way to her they would never show.. Even as it was there she got alot less that she was expecting.
I speculate Channel 4 paid some money.. part of the shows budget?
If they are behaving like 10 year olds the odds of them starting up any business is unlikely. Or by the time any of them get that good/clued up , Thelma would be retiring anyways.
Dramatics for the show. Despite that and moaning about being skint she still managed to get it all done?
Yes she was, shes open about it and talked about it in this episode. She was a single mum and comitted benefit fraud
Are these girls families paying anything towards their tuition?
If they're not, is she receiving funding from elsewhere.
[/QUOTE]
I was told once that there was some grants available if you're training young people from underprivileged backgrounds . So she may well be getting some sort of funding for a scheme like that.
They all looked like hookers.
As with "Big Fat Gypsy Weddings" all the young women dress like slappers and have some very strange views.
I gave up watching BFGW because it was pretty much the same every week...
People in and out of prison, no one in proper work yet no one short of money, calling themselves travellers but normally living in council houses or static caravans nowhere near Ireland and no one having had a proper education.
I think that Thelma's plan is a good one, but it should never need to get this far. We shouldn't pander to all this 'cutural identity' stuff when it basically boils down to allowing people to do what ever they want.
Having said that, most of the gypsy girls are orange and many of them had to have subtitles on screen when they were speaking.:D:D
They only go the odd day.
I was confused here though as they have been together for 18 years?
This would mean they had been together 8 years when she went to jail. I think Thelma is down playing her benefit fraud, they don't send single mothers to jail if they have been claiming benefits while earning a bit of cash in hand money on a market stall for a few months. She must have been doing it for years while living with her partner.
I'm not going to hold it against her as she did her time and seems genuinely remorseful but her story isn't quite as 'poor me' as she tried to make out.
I have moved from primary teaching to teaching Literacy to young adults, adults and offenders - believe me, most of them will try anything to improved their skills (if singing works, why not?) and most of them accept as an unfortunate reality that most 'learning to read and write' materials are still written for, and aimed at, primary age students (although there is much more adult-suitable material being published now). I use a spelling programme on computer which is aimed at school age students, but my adults love it too - they love the 'fireworks' on the screen when they get an answer right, they love the feeling of achievement when they can see their score improving. To say that singing the alphabet isn't appropriate you are coming at it from a normal, well-educated, functionally literate point of view. You have to turn things on their head and look at it the other way up!
(But, not having seen the programme, if they're singing the 'old' style "a, b, c, d, e, f, g..." using the letter names, not their phonetic sounds, then it won't be much use. Phonics/the sounds letters make - so "a" as in "apple", "b" as in "banana" etc - is the bedrock of learning to read and write, not letter names)
In my experience, as long as adult students know you 'give a damn' about them they aren't fussy about how you go about teaching them - and that will be Thelma's greatest tool, the fact that she gives a damn enough to do this for them. A prisoner explained it to me once (I was new to this side of things, worried about patronising them) and he said that as long as you care about doing a good job for them, and actually put things into practice and do it with them, then they don't feel patronised - and that includes caring enough to make yourself look a bit silly by singing!
Most students I have, just like Thelma's, have a reason why school didn't work for them (chaotic home life; learning difficulties, often un-diagnosed at the time; frustration becoming bad behaviour to hide it, and then, finally, truancy. And nearly all of them will say to me "I've always been told I was thick". One was so afraid of the process of writing he refused to use a pen - he'd only use a pencil because he could rub it out. And when I showed him a basic dictionary he was so afraid of it he wouldn't touch it at first. It's things like this that their often bad behaviour record is hiding - but all anyone sees is the bad behaviour, and there just isn't the time or the resources to spend getting to the bottom of it in time to stop them truanting and then worse.
But here there are, years later, pleading with me and my colleagues to help them with their letters (as they often put it) and they nearly all say they wish they could have their time again and have a different outcome. Being so literacy deficient is like walking around with an unseen disability - unable to fill in forms to claim benefits (which is what often leads to crime - no forms to fill in), unable to tell the time to get to appointments on time, unable to even read the letter from whoever saying they have an appointment at whatever day and time etc, unable to read letters from their child's school or hear them read etc. For them it's not just a little bit inconvenient, it's hugely debilitating, upsetting and humiliating. Who would want to explain themselves to everyone they meet when they're still at school? They don't, of course - so they hang around with others like them, they truant with them, get into trouble with them... and often no one at home to put the pieces back together.
Apologies if I sound too teacherish (can't help it!) but your point highlights one key question: did they go to school regularly and consistently until the age of 11? Or were they moving around, never in one place long enough to settle in, not exactly encouraged by their parents to see school as important? These things make such a difference.
The other children who have these things do learn these things at age 5 or 6 and move on to older classes building on their experience - but our school systems don't know how to plug the gaps in 8 and 9 year olds (for example) who are still missing the bits they should have learned at age 5. And then, of course, it just compounds until it becomes an unconquerable mountain.
Sadly school can only do so much, but if the parents/guardians don't insist on regular attendance and don't support their children by helping them with their reading homework and the like, we're just hitting our heads against a brick wall. The teachers can teach the basics until they're blue in the face in the appropriately-aged classes, but if the back-up isn't in place in terms of attendance (and, with travellers, staying in one place long enough to attend one school for a prolonged period of time as well) and if there is no parental support then you've already lost it by the age of Key Stage 1, as explained above.
Unfortunately there is not enough money in the education budget to pay for 'catch-up' classes for all those who need them - and that's assuming they will attend them and have the aforementioned support at home to make it worthwhile! Added to that, our education system doesn't have the flexibility to allow children to be taught in their ability groups rather than age groups. You move on and up regardless of whether you've achieved the minimum standard or not.
It falls down even more at secondary school, for various reasons, but none of them are pertinent here because generally traveller children only attend school on a nominal basis until they are 11 anyway!
So, without having seen the programme, only read about it, I recognise so many of Thelma's problems, and things like pictures of clocks on the wall showing them the right time to have coffee, lunch etc is certainly a tried and tested method with students who have difficulties in this area. And much of the behaviour she mentions, like the fighting and the neediness, are also extremely common in any student with such poor levels of basic skills. None of this is shocking me, sadly - where I work we have close on 1,500 every year like this, and worse!!!
Very interesting post. Could you tell me what the name of the spelling prog is, which you mention in your first para please?
Indeed, Margaret was hot, Shannon was hot, but the best one, imo, was the one in the denim shorts, long white socks and white hat (Lilyanne ?), well bloody fit she is
I agree - a Mum with young children and IF it was a first offence - I just can't see her being sent to prison for that.
She did make it sound almost like a one-off but I think she must have been doing it for a long, long time and BIG money to get a custodial sentence.
Hi, yes it's called "Star Spell". I'm not sure if it's still available, but having used it at work I bought it for my dyslexic daughter to use, and when I bought a one computer edition it only cost about £26. It has already-programmed spelling lists based on key words/learning attainment from KS1 up to KS3 (including subject specific words for KS3) but it also allows you to make your own spelling lists if you have specific words that are causing difficulty. It's not perfect - but no programme is. But I figured if a college with 2,000 16-19yr old students though it worth buying to be networked throughout it's entire computer system it must be worth trying!