Arlo

A More Typical Literacy Path

Arlo follows a more recognisable literacy journey, engaging with phonics, stories, and writing. While retention is a challenge, he shows strong comprehension and creativity, using literacy in art, storytelling, and play. Arlo is our child who is most typically developing, from a neurotypical point of view.

He is verbal, can hold long conversations with adults and accesses all of our group and individual literacy learning. Arlo struggles with retention so, though he accesses daily group and one-to-one phonics happily and with a lot of effort, things take a long while to stick. He is not yet able to read, either using phonics or sight reading. Yet he is brilliant with recalling and understanding stories and introducing them into his play – along with making up new stories himself. He can see a scene in a book or cartoon once and then perfectly recreate it as a drawing or out of a range of building materials.

He is a very talented artist. He can write his name and can copy letters beautifully, though he can’t independently recall what each letter looks like, and so uses this and his artistic abilities to make his own picture books and posters - a literacy activity which he takes great pride in and can do for hours. Arlo loves story time. He listens and joins in with all of our stories, just a half beat behind my own words. Arlo loves small world play. Along with a friend he will build a setting for his characters and act out long adventures, with events and dialogue. At the moment the main theme is the Mario movie. For Arlo literacy is taking a more normal route for emerging literacy skills. For Arlo, literacy is an experience that blends reading, writing, imagination, and creativity. A way to explore his artistic skills in drama, song and art – and possibly the hint of a grown-up career of illustration.