“Where did Horse Powered Reading come from?”
GREAT question! Answer: The same place pickles come from! Take a plain ordinary lumpy cucumber, clean, slice, ice, chill, pack in a sterilized container, mix & boil a dozen ingredients (pickling salt, 2 kinds of vinegar, sugar, mustard seeds, crushed red pepper flakes, celery seeds, cinnamon stick, allspice berries plus a pinch of allspice, whole cloves plus a pinch of ground cloves, turmeric), then process the filled jars in a hot water bath. 5 hours later you have my favorite- sweet bread and butter pickles.
In much the same way, a synergy of “ingredients” and hard work came together to create Horse Powered Reading! All the pieces were already in existence, but at just the right time they merged into an idea, then with time, experimentation, and work, grew into HPR. I simply followed the steps to creative problem solving.
According to Anita Woolfolk (Educational Psychology 2016 p.340), General problem-solving strategies usually include the steps of:
1. Identifying the problem [students struggling needlessly]
2. Setting goals [use EAL to help them]
3. Exploring possible solutions and consequences [experimenting with Cole and Caroline]
4. Acting [Working on new activities with 12 kids over six months]
5. Evaluating the outcome” [pre-post assessments and interviews 2012; SPED summer school 2016; Rocky Lane School 2017-18]
