Many thanks to Sir Jim Rose for all the work he has done to promote language and literacy - and please note that he continues to do so whenever opportunities are presented. He keeps commenting about his 'retirement' but he certainly has not retired from his commitment to this field.Mum’s the word
Apart from keeping us well supplied with groceries and the like, supermarkets are a rich source for observing parents interacting with their children. My wife and I shop at Sainsbury’s, our local supermarket. Over the Tannoy last week came the message: ‘Sainsbury’s - live well for less’.
Immediately after the announcement a tiny voice sang out: ‘Sainsbury’s- live well for less’. It came from a small child riding in a shopping trolley next to us. Her Mum said, ‘that’s right, Trudy, good girl’, then gave her a kiss - rewarding Trudy with immediate praise and thus encouraging her to pay attention to spoken words. Well done Mum - great parenting.
Her Mum told me that Trudy was not yet two years old and was an ‘early talker’. Trudy almost certainly had no idea what the words she had heard meant yet she was able to reproduce them word perfect. Trudy clearly demonstrated the ability to listen carefully – an essential attribute that tends to be underplayed in the discourse on teaching reading.
An interesting thing about this phenomenon is that young children, such as Trudy, can repeat not only single words but also strings of words heard for the first time even though they cannot understand what the words mean. Hungry researchers might earn a crust by delving into this minor miracle, which seems to be a triumph of memory over meaning.
Trudy demonstrated an obvious, though often overlooked, truth about children’s language development: the ability to hear and reproduce sounds and spoken words is ‘wired- in’, as it were, from birth. I recall watching a riveting video clip of twin babies babbling nonsense to each other, seemingly for the sheer joy of hearing and making sounds well before they could say real words.
We are not the only two-legged creatures who can imitate sounds and words of course. Some of our feathered friends can do this – ask any pirate who owns a parrot. Blackbirds, according to BBC Radio’s ‘Bird of the Day’, can imitate traffic sounds.
Parents and others responsible for bringing up young children need to recognise the importance of fostering that early enjoyment of sounds and words as one of several things they can do to pave the way to reading and start children on the road to literacy.
Learning how to read, however, demands far more than parroting sounds and words. Unlike speech, reading is not ‘wired-in’. It is a cultural construct. Our brains have to learn to match the sounds that make up spoken words to the ‘tadpoles’ on the page so as to pronounce words.
In our culture, children must master how the alphabet works for reading and writing. They cannot be left to winkle out how to do this by themselves. They need skilled, systematic teaching in how to build words – a key process known as phonics.
From my antediluvian teacher training days, I recall the opening paragraph of a book on the aims of education which was required reading:
‘It is good for teachers to remember that parents brought up children in the life of the tribe long before schoolmasters were thought of, and for professors of education to acknowledge that they are a recent excrescence on the educational structure.’ Glaucon: Professor M.V.C. Jeffreys (1950)
For many parents today the ‘life of the tribe’ has become so complex that they need all the support we can muster to help them ‘bring up’ children. Within that context we might well ask: what are reasonable expectations of parents for fostering literacy in promoting young children’s overall development – physical, intellectual, social and emotional?
Arguably, while parents are widely variable in their talents, for the most part, expecting them to ‘teach’ the finer points of phonic work is a bridge too far: that is the territory of skilled practitioners and marks a watershed between what is within and what is beyond the reach of most parents in supporting reading.
So what might pre-school settings and schools do to help parents play their part in enriching young children’s language development? A simple checklist might be one helpful element in this endeavour.
Atul Gwande, the highly acclaimed surgeon is famous for his checklists that have contributed massively to improving outcomes for patients. Interviewed recently on ‘Desert Island Discs’, he said that checklists for surgeons and their teams need to start with some seemingly obvious, simple questions, such as: ‘Have we got the right body on the table?’
For parents, we might start modestly by proposing, say, three things that they can do really well and are known to be very effective in paving the way to literacy.
Recognising the power of story would certainly feature in my ‘top three’ of any such checklist. Activities, such as, oral storytelling, reading and re-reading favourite stories with lots of opportunities to listen carefully, question, discuss, dramatise story events and make up their own stories rarely fail to captivate young children, stimulate their imagination, boost the growth of a wide vocabulary and foster all-important good attitudes to reading.
No doubt there is a mountain of research under-pinning the value of these activities. My conviction, however, stems from hours invested in story activities with my grandchildren. Many re-tellings of traditional fairy stories as well as ‘The Gruffalo’ and ‘Thomas the Tank Engine’ have added life to my years. But therein lies the rub – no matter how well we fashion the ‘top three’ the main obstacles for many parents may be a lack of time and, or, a firm commitment to invest time in them. Perhaps making that plain should be the first of the ‘top three’.
What do you suggest might be the third element of this virtuous triangle for parents?
Jim Rose
29th March 2016
You can read about Sir Jim Rose and his enormous contribution to education and literacy here:
http://www.iferi.org/cmt-management-tea ... d-f-r-s-a/