During a vibrant conversation with 8 year old Tamati Radford, he explained what he did to make sure he could read the dinosaur book everyone else could read, but to his dismay, he couldn't read, yet.

 What do you say to an 8 year old who talks about his inspiring journey of courage and conviction - Matatūtanga, and how he taught himself to read his dinosaur book by reading lots of books about dinosaurs! "He tama pai whakaharahara e Tamati Radford."

Tamati said to his Mum, just before we went into lockdown, that he wanted to learn to read, because he was tired of not being able to read his cool dinosaur book. 

Tamati started by going to the library, where he got all the books he could find about dinosaurs. He started by reading one book. One book became 15 books, which he said took him about 1/2 a day to read. Reading fifteen books became 25 books in one day. 

Tamati said Mum would sometimes listen to him read otherwise his strategy was to hide away, by himself, and read, read, read.

When I asked him what he did when he didn't know a word he said, "I would go onto Google on my phone and look up the words I didn't know." 

After almost 3 months of continuous reading, Tamati had taught himself to read the cool dinosaur book he so desperately wanted to read, by himself.

After Tamati successfully read the dinosaur book independently he told me he went on to read about the megalodon, an extinct species of shark. Tamati proceeded to tell me in great detail about the megalodon, "the most feared thing in the ocean."

Tamati's passion for reading has expanded to learning about Anglerfish, which I decided to search on Google to find out what an Anglerfish looked like. After another interesting conversation with Tamati about Anglerfish we finished our interview watching a short video about Anglerfish. 

Tamati Radford is unstoppable! When Tamati did a reading test in February this year, he was reading with understanding at Magenta (pre-reader). Earlier this month Tamati's reading test showed he had moved up 14 reading levels to Orange. He is so determined to keep reading to improve his reading that the sky is the limit for Tamati Radford. 

So what's the moral of this story....If you really want to learn to read you have to read lots and lots to become a better reader.

You are extraordinary Tamati Radford. Tū ki te ao, tau ana!