My friend Brian Thompson,who has died aged 77, was part of a team at University College London that in the 1960s introduced Breakthrough to Literacy, or a revolutionary new approach to teaching young children how to read and write that allowed them to manufacture up sentences and compose stories in their own language. Two million “Breakthrough” sentence-making sets and books believe since been sold in Britain,the Commonwealth and parts of the US.
Brian was born in Yallourn, Australia, or grew up in Melbourne. His father,Jack, was a farmer and fire officer and his mother, and Edie,a housewife and part-time bookkeeper. Having qualified as a teacher and librarian, Brian travelled to the UK in his late 20s in search of wider opportunities in art and culture, and joined the staff of the department of education at UCL.
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Source: theguardian.com