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| This article first appeared in the March 2004 issue of Literacy
Today (issue no. 38). |
Sue Palmer
Teacher and writer Sue Palmer argues for more emphasis
on early language development during the early years of school, and explains
her seven-stranded Foundations of Literacy programme.
It's a truth universally acknowledged that successful development of literacy
depends upon language and listening skills. So it's worrying that social
and cultural changes over the last quarter of a century have led to a
deterioration in these skills, as parents ceased to speak with and sing
to their children as much as they did in the past. The National Literacy
Trust's Talk
To Your Baby campaign is trying to restore this vital parent-child
interaction.
Given growing concern about children's language development, you would
expect in the early years of schooling for there to be heavy concentration
on speaking and listening. Unfortunately, there isn't. Instead, the 'pencil
and paper' culture engendered by national testing has extended downwards
in many schools to influence practice in Reception, and sometimes even
nursery; instead of oral language development, very young children are
increasingly expected to struggle with reading schemes and worksheets.
Fortunately, the National Primary Strategy has now appointed a foundation
stage director, Lesley Staggs, who is overseeing the development of training
materials about language development for early years practitioners. It
is also likely that schools will soon be encouraged to make Year 1 a 'transition
year' between the foundation stage and the national curriculum, so that
more time can be devoted to preparation - especially oral work - before
children are expected to put pencil to paper. This would bring us nearer
to most other European countries, where a 'kindergarten curriculum' involves
a structured course of pre-literacy activities, before children begin
formal literacy at six or seven years of age. In Wales and Northern Ireland,
they are already creating such a 'foundation curriculum'.
Over the last three years, as an independent literacy consultant on the
in-service circuit, I have been talking to early years specialists, speech
therapists, educational psychologists and teachers from all over Britain
and Europe to work out what seems the best foundation for literacy. I've
also been lucky enough to visit pre-schools in Finland (consistently top
nation for achievement in literacy), and to work with literacy specialist
Pie Corbett, who is leading an innovative project in South Gloucestershire
on literacy through storytelling.
Early years consultant Ros Bayley has helped me collate all this information,
and in November 2003, schools in the CPR Success Zone in Cornwall began
helping to translate it into practice. What we have developed is a seven-stranded
Foundations of Literacy programme.
Like the best European practice, the programme is extremely structured
and rigorous - but must also be appropriate and appealing to the three
to six-year-old children for whom it's designed, with a sensitive balance
of teacher and child-directed activity. This is because of another truth,
universally acknowledged yet all too often forgotten: children - all children
- learn much, much better when they're having FUN.
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Foundations of literacy: seven strands of practice
Learning to listen: discrimination
of foreground sounds against background noise; developing aural
attention span; social listening skills, including making eye contact
and attending to the speaker; mental imagining; development of auditory
memory.
Time to talk: compensation for language
delay, including expansion and 'pole-bridging' talk; social speech
skills, including awareness of audience and turn-taking; vocabulary
development; imitation of and innovation upon sentence structures;
development of language to explain, explore, plan, predict, recall
and analyse.
Music and memory: development of
rhythm, beginning with the ability to hold a steady beat; speech
and listening skills as above, especially articulation and voice
control, turn-taking, singing in time with others and development
of auditory memory; familiarity with written language patterns,
story grammar and prediction skills.
Learning about print: awareness of
the nature and functions of print; knowledge of the alphabet letters;
concepts about reading and writing; knowledge of essential sight
words.
Tuning into sound: listening skills
and general language awareness; awareness of rhyme, rhythm and alliteration;
phonemic awareness, including blending and segmenting; phonic knowledge,
including the alphabet code.
Moving into writing: all the above
skills and knowledge; refinement of motor control from large scale
to fine control and hand-eye coordination; basic letter shape formation;
development of the finger muscles; pencil grip and control.
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