Whilst in Michigan, I attended a training course for early years teachers (I'm nothing if not dedicated!) called Growing Readers, by Kathy Collins.
It was very interesting, not least because we are moving away from some of her ideas in England now - she goes for what we used to call the "headlights" approach of using all methods to learn how to read (such as I secretly approve of myself) while we are going for "synthetic phonics", using a primarily phonic approach.
Anyway, the most valuable point I came away with is some amunition to use on parents who pester us to teach our nursery children to recite the alphabet and write their names; it's a quotation from a piece of research by American educationalist Carline Beers:
"Coming to school knowing your alphabet and able to write your name is a predictor of 1st grade success. Children being frequently and consistently read to before coming to school predicts 11 grade success."
I love it!
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LissaT
Pro - 25 Aug. 2007 @ 21:49:13
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lizdavies
- 27 Aug. 2007 @ 14:17:56
I do believe in reading readiness and have happily encouraged nursery children who are beginning to read and write, to the best of my ability. Some children love books and start young. Others can't distinguish sounds aurally, let alone visually.
What I object to are those parents who teach their children set words and get them to practise regularly, which very often leaves children with a horrid awareness that there's a right way and a wrong way to write, and they won't have a go at using their own emerging phonic awareness.-
At the tender age of four I tried beating literacy into two year old Helen: I succeeded in that she learnt to read at a technical level well in advance of her years, but didn't actually pick up a book for pleasure until she was nearly 9, although she always enjoyed listening to stories.
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Do you believe in reading readiness?
I could read before I was 3; so could my mother and her mother, and so, I believe, could you. It was just a natural thing like learning to talk. For other people it is clearly a slow and difficult process, but in some countries the schools don't start teaching children to read until they are six rather than four as here, and the majority of children are said to pick it up quite easily because they are ready, and by the time they are eight the average level of reading is well ahead of English children.