Learning to recite poetry from the age of 5

[Morebiscuitsplease]

While I have no problem with the emphasis on grammar and spelling. What does making a child learn poetry by heart really really teach a five year old? Surely appreciation and comprehension are more important. I feel that there are more useful things teachers could be doing with their time. Is this another of Gove's throwbacks to the fifties? if so, can someone please remind him we are educating our children for the 21 st century.

"There are whole sections of society that are suffering from maternal deprivation that these schemes can help."

What does this mean? Surely parental deprivation?

I don't understand why learning poetry by rote is the be all and end all?

What is wrong with songs?
Complex language - what is wrong with books?

i don't understand why poetry - and specifically learning it by rote and reciting it - is being seen as a magic bullet?

Is it mainly people with good memories who like poetry who feel this way? (Rhetorical question )

One last point which is I think it is more important by far to understand multiplication that to be able to recite the tables (and not necessarily understand why as I know went on when I was at school).

Poems are not a magic bullet but they are part and parcel of a good arsenal. So why on earth would we exclude them?

I don't think it is a "Magic bullet" there is no one way of learning that is going to magically create well educated kids. But along with many other learning strategies is has a lot of merit and is not IMHO to be just dismissed as "only for wordy types" besides even if it were, who is to say at age 5 that your child isn't a wordy type even if you are not.

Of course you need to understand your times tables, but there is also no harm in memorising them as an aide de memoir. Different techniques work with different types of children. Why not embrace them. After all memorising, poems stories and songs are deeply rooted in our psyche as humans, we do it almost instinctively with our children from birtht rough songes and nursery rhymes so what on earth os wrong with expanding this to explore language and the brain's ability to learn.

I'm a sciencey/mathsy type ... but I'm glad I learned some poetry at school. Its quite interesting how some of it gradually came back after I had DD. I wanted something rhythmic to 'chant' instead of singing at one point, and Kipling's Elephant Song re-emerged; we'd learned it as a class piece, with some solo lines and some parts all together.

DDs school did 'elocution' - nothing to do with posh pronunciation, it was about helping them to speak confidently. She really enjoyed learning poems, nearly always comic ones.

They shouldn't be excluded obviously

Just it needs to be remembered that there are lots of different sorts of people and the direction Gove is pointing seems to be a return to a very learn-by-rote 1950s stylee fantasy. I just wonder what will fall through the cracks in order to accomodate his ideas. If you are learning the 12 times tables by rote by 9 (or whatever it is he has said) do you have the time to get the children to actually understand the relationships and how it all works? Children standing up and reciting their tables looks impressive but it does not indicate anything deeper.

I also think that at age 5 the idea of having to learn something by rote when you potentially can't even read the words to assist with learning it is very hard. Some papers talk about standing up and reciting to the class. Potentially very stressful for the children I'd have thought.

response from michael rosen here

His point about phonics is a good one.

Learning to speak out loud in this way is a good thing, be it reading or reciting from memory.
And I say this as someone who is very shy when it comes to things like this - had I had to do such things at school more, esp in groups rather than full classes, I have no doubt it would have helped me.

Poetry reciting will help develop vocabulary, rhyming skills, illiteration, rhythm, etc - a whole load of skills.

I don't know. Looks like I am in a minority.

DD is nearly 5 and she has been learning songs at school in class, obviously learning to read, songs for school plays, school song, they read to them and I imagine some of the stuff they read is in rhymes.

It looks like it's just me but the idea of getting DD to learn a poem by rote when she is only just starting to read and then recite it for the class seems like a tall order. It might be OK for children who are older or younger ones with more confidence or who are older in the class but for this age it just feels a bit much.

She did 2 lines in the nativity and that was stressful enough!

But that's an argumet for her to do more not less. I was a terribly shy child but am not a remotely shy adult - the difference being that i have taught for many years so got used to being in front of lots of people. My dcs ted slightly towards shyness too, but I am pleased their schools do much more to encourage public speaking activities, assemblies, speeches, plays etc so they get used to it - giving presentations and presenting onself is essential in almost all careers at some point (or certainly job interviews) so getting used to it early will benefit everyone.

But she was only 4.

Do you think they need to be doing this stuff in preschool?

I honestly think that getting very young children to stand up and recite verses is too much, and runs the risk of putting children off for life.

Michael Rosen's point that the children join in when they are ready is a better method surely. One bad experience as a child can put you off something for life, unfortunately.

If you take a very nervous 4 yo and force them to perform it can do much more harm than good.

DD was very good in the end and said her words well into the microphone, albeit while looking at the floor! Most of the other children her age did not have lines and a couple of ones who did bottled it. I was very proud

TBH I am not seeing this (not wanting to do it / not doing it) as worrying behaviour in children this age, more completely normal. For many children confidence needs to be built slowly and forcing them to do something they aren't ready for will have the opposite result to the one desired. That's how I feel about it anyway, I know from experience that lots of parents disagree with me.

Not proud they bottled it obv but proud of DD.

Interesting that i thought she did well but another person sees the same result as a cause for concern!

It's a fantastic idea. It aids learning and it is fun. It sharpens the memory and develops the innate feel for language and sound.

Go to youtube and type "3 year old recites poem" and you will see examples that most adults could not do.

As the headmistress on the radio said today, about Gove's times table plans, it is important to have high expectations.

SardineQueen - any decent teacher would never force a child to stand in front of everyone and recite anything anyway. they may encourage but I would imagine any good teacher would let a child learn along with the others and get them to join in when they are ready. Also I would imagine many children doing the reciting as a group not individually - just the whole time for allowing 30 children to do this individually isn't practical alone.

We do learn Pie Corbett style stories with the words and actions, and we do this from reception. So we have 4 year olds learning whole stories by heart and reciting them as a class or in groups in front of other children in the school, or during class assemblies. Children pick them up really quickly, even with totally unknown books, generally far quicker than the adults that's for sure.

I see the poetry things as being not much different to what schools are doing anyway.

Some of our Pie Corbertt work is rhyming books - thinking of Julia Donaldson type, etc. so tbh is it really that much different at all???

I agree hula another storm in a teacup. I daresay they'll be a startling realisation that schools do all these things already. Michael needs to get out more.

Gruffalo, Hairy Mcclairy, Arberg books, nursery rhymes, learning songs for shows, learning words to songs in assemblies, etc, etc, etc. It's all done already. The 'performance' criterion is even in the old framework.

Been there..... doing it......

As people were saying upthread this is done in preschool, if you count stuff like nursery rhymes, learning songs and all the rest of it.

Many of the Julia Donaldson books we do at home from having read it so often!

DD already does the things that you mention flexy I listed them upthread a bit.

What I have read in the papers though does seem to be a different sort of thing - a headmaster I saw interviewed on the news last night said some similar things to what I have said on here. Concerns about "learning by rote" and making sure that all aspects of children's development are catered for.

'maternal deprivation' what if you dont do nursery rhymes with your child?

i have never been a huge fan of nursery rhymes, we do sing/read a few and they have learnt them at pre-school, ds4 is currently a fan of once i caught a fish alive, courtesy of pre-school.

i think its something thats already done at pre-school and school so no idea why its being wheeled out as some new thing!

and i am not sure that learning by rote is necessarily a good thing, yes its certainly a tool worth having (if you can do it) but there is much more to education than learning by rote.

Yes there is much more to school than learning by rote. But it is an integral skil which everyone will need at some stage (just ask any decent MFL teacher about pupils and parents needing to appreciate how important rote learning is).

I agree with wordfactory on the importance of learning by rote for MFL. There is no way you can learn French/German/Italian/Spanish etc verb conjugations unless you commit them to memory before trying to apply them in context. Even MT DCs have to do this for those languages. And it takes years to master the whole bang lot.

Why is learning by rote important?
What about people who can't do it?
i have had a pretty successful life and career without being able to do it, or learn how to do it.
I don't get it.
Why is having rows of children reciting their times tables so vital?

What is MFL?

Modern Foreign Languages.

As Bonsoir says, there is really no other way to learn your vocab and grammar. You just have to commit it to memory.

Other countries get this. France have rote learning as part of their curriculum. As do the vast majority of Asia (learning Mandarin for example requires you to rote learn the characters.)

And the scandi countries do it. A lot. They just don't dress it up so formally. Yet all those pupils all learn numerous MFL all by learning their vocab and grammar.