As staff form a relationship with your child by getting to know their strengths and preferences, they will consult regularly with you to create a joint record of your child`s progress.
This could include: observing your child`s activities and tasks; notes about how happy and settled they are; information gained by asking questions and listening carefully to their responses; examples of drawings, writing and artwork: something they`ve made or produced.
Staff will use this, along with any information you share to plan the next steps in your child`s learning. This record will also be a basis for regular discussion with you, along with more informal day-to-day contact
http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/Images/InformationforParentsandCarers_tcm4-598459.pdfBecause the development of literacy skills plays an important role in all learning, the experiences and outcomes provided by CfE to improve literacy will be provided by all teachers across the curriculum. There should be opportunities for the child to:
communicate, collaborate and build relationships
reflect on and explain their literacy and thinking skills, using feedback to help them improve and sensitively provide feedback for others
engage with and create a wide range of texts in different media, taking advantage of the opportunities of ICT.
develop their understanding of what is special, vibrant and valuable about their own and other cultures and their languages
explore the richness and diversity of language
extend and enrich their vocabulary through listening, talking, watching and reading
The Scottish Government assures us that the curriculum is progressive, modern, and fit for the 21st century. Note there is little focused attention on teaching reading, writing, spelling, punctuation and grammar but that is probably because these are seen as `drill and kill` methodologies with little opportunity for active learning and collaborative work. However, with the focus on communicating, collaborating and relationships there should be plenty of information to share about those important next steps.
Despite confidence in the curriculum, the Scottish Government still recognises the need for a Literacy Action Plan to raise standards of literacy for all from the early years through to adulthood, and will focus particularly on those with the lowest levels of literacy who happen to be the most deprived in society. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation informs us that: `Scottish education serves many children well, but the attainment gap between pupils from the richest and poorest backgrounds is wider than in many similar countries.` The deprivation continues throughout life with poor employment prospects, health inequalities and lower social and political participation in society.
The main policy frameworks which the Scottish government has established to improve literacy across the key life stages are the Early Years Framework, Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) and Getting it right for every Child (GIRFEC). This last policy input may come as a surprise when considering literacy, but wherever there are children in Scotland there will be GIRFEC, and the Scottish government takes the view that the journey towards literacy begins at birth.
"In the very early years, the home learning environment for children from birth to three has a significant impact on cognitive development, willingness to learn and literacy and language development. Parents, irrespective of socio-economic group or where they live, can make a real difference to their children's outcomes by talking to them, playing with them and ensuring they engage in different experiences."
"Where parents need additional support, GIRFEC, alongside guidance on supporting adult learners, will aim to ensure early and co-ordinated intervention by agencies who work together to meet the needs of children and their families."
It can be seen that wherever there is GIRFEC there are sure to be early interventions.
Bishopblog, a neuroscientist asks: `Is poor parenting really to blame for children`s school problems?` She answers by referring to children with language and communication difficulties and says that, contrary to popular opinion, parental behaviour does not seem to play an important role.
There are converging lines of evidence that can be considered. The weakest kind is correlational: if you find that aspects of parenting correlate with the child’s language development, you can’t be sure of a causal link; there could be a third variable that simultaneously influences both the parenting and the child’s language.
http://deevybee.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/its-tough-being-parent-of-child-with.html
So those early interventions, from birth to three, or from three to five, especially when they are inflicted on families by the unwelcome advances of the named person, could be a complete waste of resources. Yet there is one intervention that is guaranteed to make a big difference, especially to children from disadvantaged backgrounds, but the education establishment in Scotland would have to accept responsibility for teaching children to read and forget their progressive ideas about relationships, listening, talking and watching:
David Bell, the head of Ofsted, said recently that primary schools were spending so much time teaching literacy and numeracy that they were failing to give their pupils a rounded education. And yet, he added, the national literacy strategy appeared to have stalled, leaving one pupil in four unable to read and write properly.
So how has the literacy strategy – supposedly one of the jewels in the Department for Education's crown – resulted in a double failure across the primary curriculum? The simple answer is that it is blind to what works. It has tried to achieve its aims by bluster and prescription instead of by research and understanding.
Failure to teach reading is not a new problem. A recent report from the Basic Skills Unit showed that just over a fifth of adults are functionally illiterate. But it need not be so, for the failure is very largely the result of the way reading is taught.
A child who knows the letter sounds, and can blend, is able to read new words that he or she has never seen before. By contrast a child taught to "read on sight" will know only the words taught so far...The difference in achievement of those taught by each method is stark.
http://www.cre.org.uk/docs/teaching_of_reading.htmlIn other words, children should be taught to read in a systematic, focused and coherent way beginning with the basic building blocks and the sounds which correspond to the letters. Never mind `look and say` or presenting a mixture of the two systems. Apart from words like `the` and `and` which are so frequent in the literature that even non-readers easily recognise them by sight, synthetic phonics has proved itself over time. Similar logic needs to be applied to writing and spelling, which should be kept in step with reading. A focus on sentence structure, punctuation and grammar should follow; beginning with the simple sentence and progressing to the more complex.
Spreading literacy in a jumble across the curriculum, in the early stages particularly, will confuse and then dishearten many pupils, and for them, will be a recipe for failure. There is no need to insist that listening, talking and watching should be part of literacy in the curriculum, when these are behaviours which happen naturally - unless the purpose is to blame poor parents for their lack of attention to their pre-school children. Instead, it is time to pay attention to what works in schools and to note that reading and writing is literacy in the early stages. Without these skills being firmly established there can be no development.
Here is a report on independent schools which excel. Note what they have to say about the importance of knowledge based education and the attention given to reading.
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