SUE ELLIS IS THE Co-Director of the British Centre for Language in Primary Education. It is a high-powered job, but recently she found herself sitting in front of a class of Hong Kong students answering questions about her life as a frog.
'What is it like to be a frog?' one boy asked. 'Oh well, it is wet and slimy and I catch insects on my long tongue,' she replied.
Ellis had not lost her sanity, but was acting out the type of role that is part and parcel of a primary teacher's job.
In this instance, she was playing the role of the Frog Prince from Jon Scieszka's book The Frog Prince Continued in a model lesson conducted by her advisory teacher colleague Clare Warner.
The lesson was drawn from the National Literacy Strategy (NLS) introduced into English primary schools in 1998.
Hong Kong is not alone in being concerned about declining literacy standards, real or otherwise. In England, the NLS was developed as a response to perceived shortcomings among pupils. It was intended to formalise and spread the best practices of the most successful schools, focusing in particular on lesson structure and content to lift standards of reading, writing, spelling and grammar.
Warner and Ellis were invited to Hong Kong earlier this year by the British Council to spread the word about the strategy.