Why is MN so obsessed with reception reading?

[skiphopskidaddle]

It's a marathon, not a sprint. It doesn't matter if Johnny is on red and Amy is on lilac as (a) different schools go at different paces and (b) children develop different skills in different order.

I can't quite believe the number of reception reading threads I've seen this week along the lines of "what colour book is yours on?". I'm going over to the behaviour/development board now to check for obsessive posting about when children learn to walk. Cos it doesn't matter either, in general.

The Manifesto article came from the Open EYE website I believe.

I read before starting school in Ireland at just under 5 (Autumn b-day). Two of the DDs read between 3.5 and 4, the other three DCs at 4 to 4.5, without any exposure to formal teaching as they were in the US. There was no slog involved. However, that's just anecdotal. Maybe it wouldn't have been slogging for any of them to learn to read if they had been exposed to formal teaching, but what would have been sacrificed in order to devote the necessary time to SP?

When they went to school they spent their 2.5 hours every day after initially hanging up their own jackets, taking off their own boots and putting on their own shoes when they arrived, and putting on their own hats and gloves and snowboots when going home (no parents allowed into the school in the morning or at dismissal) listening to stories, drawing, painting, doing a good deal of clapping, singing, rhythm exercises and movement, sharing crayons and negotiating to solve arguments, taking turns at the favourite toys, doing show and tell once a week, learning classroom etiquette like raising a hand before speaking out in a group setting, cleaning up when prompted, serving snack to each other, eating and drinking in an orderly way, copying and exploring shapes, colouring, looking at basic mathematical concepts and relationships like more/less, higher/lower, bigger/smaller, ordering items, sorting, recognising letters (but no phonic instruction) playing at the water table, the sand table, the list goes on...

The Pirls study suggests otherwise, Adela, for younger people anyway.

From reading all the posts, I find it a pity that so much emotion is being invested in opinions based on so little factual knowledge.

Here are some facts.

All schooling depends on first learning how to read and write.

Our schools do not ensure all students learn to read and write.

We have overwhelming evidence from longtitudinal evidence-based randomised research studies on which strategies are most effective in teaching all students to read, and which strategies are least effective in teaching all students to read.

All initial teacher training institutions provide little to none information on the most effective strategies for teaching & learning beginning reading (which are direct, explicit, intensive, systematic instruction in phonemic awareness, synthetic phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension).

The English Alphabetic Code is difficult to teach and learn and attempts to reform it began in the mid 15th Century.

The 'simplify spelling movement' (of which Masha Bell is typical) has been around for well over a hundred years and has achieved nothing because their 'opinion' of how to simplify spelling does not work. The various suggestions of how to 'simplify' written English always lead to a complete dead-end.

The International Phonetic Association, (a group that does NOT have Masha Bell in its midst) have successfully developed a fully functioning alphabetic code, the International Phonetic Alphabet.

'The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin alphabet. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association as a standardized representation of the sounds of spoken language..." (Wikipedia)

The IPA will not replace our current Alphabet.

The evidence informs us that explicit instruction in synthetic phonics is the most effective way to teach decoding, and decoding is the crucial first step to learning to read and write properly.

Over the last 50 or so years, there has been a massive amount of evidence based research conducted by experts in the fields of cognitive neuroscience, developmental psychology, behavioral pediatrics, language and attention disorders, and human learning and learning disorders. These research centres are international, see for example;

(USA)Child Development and Behavior Branch within the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD)

(Australia) Macquarie University Institute of Human Cognition and Brain Science, which consists of two research centres, one in the area of cognitive science (MACCS) and the other in the area of special education (MUSEC).

Little to none of the scientific evidence on how best to teach and learn makes its way into classrooms because our educational establishment is committed to 'fad du jour' education philosophies.

The evidence informs us that children are capable of learning to read once they can hear the seperate sounds that make up spoken words. This ability starts to develop around 18 months and, in most children, is sufficiently developed by the age of 3 years. There is no optimal age to learn to read although 5 years is the most common starting age.

Delaying formal instruction in reading has a neutral effect on advantaged children who will quickly pick up what they need to progress well in school.

Delaying formal instruction in reading has a disasterous effect on disadvantaged children who fall further and further behind and within a few short years after starting school, are too far behind to ever make up the distance. For more information on this, see The Matthew Effect and Zig Englemann on 'academic child abuse'.

As for parents, we are dammed if we do and dammed if we don't. Any parent who understands that learning to read is imperative to fully functioning in school and adult life, given the current state of teaching reading in schools, has to get fully involved, ask difficult questions, make a nuisance of yourself at your child's school, get insulted by teachers and other parents for being 'pushy', just to make sure that your child does not fall into the mass of illiterate and semi-literate students who spew out of our schools.

For any parent reading this who has ever been accused of being pushy or competative, take this as a compliment. It means you are on the right track to making sure your child leans to read.

'The Matthew effect' concerns children who fail to learn to read after four or five years of schooling, not children who are not taught to read at age 4. It does not have any implication for children who are not taught to read at age 4. Engelmann's theories were developed with disadvantaged children in mind and are useful in initially teaching reading to children whose disadvantage has robbed them of the sort of pre-reading background that more advantaged children enjoy when they come to school.

If a child does not fall into the category of disadvantaged, there is nothing to be gained from pushing reading at age 4 and much to be lost. And even with early formal teaching of reading, short-term gains for the disadvantaged evaporate (especially among boys) when students reach secondary level and standards in English, history, etc., start rising dramatically, demanding advanced vocabulary and rhetorical skills that are very difficult for most disadvantaged students to produce.

Ultimately, the only way to make absolutely sure your child learns anything is to teach her yourself. Teachers and pedagogical methods cannot make up for what is missing at home in the long run. The most important teacher until age 8 or so is the parent. After that, schools kick in and start the relatively easy task of educating some, and the uphill struggle of educating others.

About 20 years ago, when the US was shocked to find out it wasn't alone on the top of the hill despite winning the Cold War, Japan and all things Japanese loomed on the horizon like some sort of tidal wave ready to swallow up all things American and wash away life as Americans knew it. Suddenly everything American, including the education 'system' was examined for the kind of flaws that had made it possible for Japan to overtake the US after being literally flattened during WW2.

Education was especially scrutinised. The high school that my DD1 eventually attended rushed to add Japanese as one of the languages offered. Fast forward to a few years ago and suddenly China was rolling in from the horizon, and again the scramble was on to solve the problems of the economy, or to give the appearance that it was being taken care of, and Chinese was added to the language department's offerings.

In the meantime, two Republican administrations failed to increase education funding to any great increased extent, teacher training remained patchy, and the number of children living in poverty in the US rose dramatically, while tax breaks to the rich were handed out and extended. Without the income generated by many family members' tours of duty for the last several years, many states would be in even worse straits then they are now and so would their education systems. No Child Left Behind was passed, with draconian punishments for schools failing to meet standards.

The lessons to be learned are:
You can't starve children and expect them to do well in school.
You shouldn't fiddle with the education system in order to fix current economic difficulties. It's tempting to speak MBA language about schools performance, standards, testing, etc., all sound so neat and so methodical and structured, and it seems to appeal to voters but in the long run it's not good for children.

Much of the language of education reform is in fact a form of pandering to general current anxiety and usually aimed at right wing voters who are inclined to see the poor as slackers/terrible parents whose children should probably be taken from them, and who see teachers and teachers' unions (unions in general) as malingerers. Appealing to anxiety and fear and trying to win elections on a platform of education reform is academic child abuse of the worst kind and ultimately a waste of childrens' time and taxpayers' money.

Teachers and pedagogical methods cannot make up for what is missing at home in the long run.
What an odd statement. Teachers make all the difference to some children, in fact I can think of several I am teaching to read at this moment who without me would be illiterate. One of the main purposes of schooling is just that, to do what parents cannot.

Sooooooo - how's everyone's Finnish coming along?

Why is 4 the magic age in the UK?
The simple answer mathanxiety is that it isn't and the age children are taught to read in the UK varies from LA to LA, school to school, and even child to child.

What underpins your practice according to your posts here is not what EYFS calls for. There is a massive contradiction in saying you teach children SP and you follow a play-based programme. Never the twain shall meet.

Actually mathanxiety you if you read the EYFS you will see it requires a balance between adult initiated and child initiated learning ...

SP is a very specific method that has nothing whatsoever to do with children 'reaching out into the world and making sense of their experiences with other people, objects and events' in a way that involves any sort of natural flow.
and if you visit a number of Early Years classrooms you will see that there are a multitude of methods being used ...

Would it interest you that I was one of the early signatories of the Open Eye petition (at the invitation of Sue Palmer before it went public) and that I see no conflict between that and the acknowledge good Early Years practice in my school?

there is nothing to be gained from pushing reading at age 4 and much to be lost

Learning to read is not 'natural', neither for that matter is playing an instrument, or a sport. They are cultural, and adults choose when a child is to learn these cultural matters. Children's feelings are considered and great efforts to maintain their interest and motivation are made.
Most of the young children at my school are absolutely dying to learn to read!

Much of the language of education reform is in fact a form of pandering to general current anxiety and usually aimed at right wing voters who are inclined to see the poor as slackers/terrible parents whose children should probably be taken from them, and who see teachers and teachers' unions (unions in general) as malingerers

That is such a sad and cynical statement. I work in an area of high deprivation; my choice of synthetic phonics for helping struggling secondary school readers was not in any way motivated by a desire to please Daily Mail readers. In fact, it wasn't until I became involved with an SP lobbying group that I came to understand how very 'political' the subject is.

My motivation was a desire to improve the children's self esteem, by showing them that they could learn to read and they were not 'thick' or 'stupid', and to help improve their life chances. This is hardly the right-wing 'keep the poor in their place' attitude which is peddled by opponents of phonics teaching as being the prime objective of phonics practitioners.

(I hope I need hardly say that I continue to use SP because it actually works)

Ymeyer - Here are some facts for you:

There is NO RESEARCH that says starting formal education early leads to academic advantage.

There are 70 EYFS goals for children to achieve before they are 5. Teachers spend a lot of their time (sadly for them) ticking boxes. I passionately feel that this time should be spent engaging with the children, playing with them, reading to them and all the other wonderful things children do when they are children!

A lot of the EYFS is great but I object to the literacy and nuneracy targets. Why can't government leave the teachers to do their job?

Children are eager to please at this age so it appears they want to read when really they want the approval of an adult.

Do all these targets really give children the desire to learn or give them the predisposition to find things out? At 5 and 6 they need to be exploring their world, they don't need targets.

I agree with you, mathanxiety. A lot of what goes on in the home for the first six to seven years of life is actually more influential than the type os schooling a child receives. I believe this was proven under the Labour government which is why surestart centres were introduced.

Children are eager to please at this age so it appears they want to read when really they want the approval of an adult.

Hmm...Montessori's three year olds were self teaching for intrinsic reward...

There are 70 EYFS goals for children to achieve before they are 5. I'm not sure where you get your facts from but there 117 profile points, 52 of them are ELGs. Neither is it expected that children achieve them all by the age of 5.

Oh and they existed long before EYFS was introduced

Children are eager to please at this age so it appears they want to read when really they want the approval of an adult.

Entirely a matter of opinion! And even if it is for adult approval... so what?

Still far too many targets MRZ! Do you not agree? Oh dear, and all these targets have been around long before EYFS - the shame of it! Targets at reception level - where will it ever stop? Will there be targets for 2 and 3 year olds attending nursery?

EYFS does extend to nursery settings. I've found it absolutely the most useful tool for learning how my son is-an easily absorbed list of what he has been seen to do and not do at nursery which I can compare with home. I'd much rather get that regularly than the ridiculous amount of info about when and how he ate, shat and slept. I've also found it very useful when reviewing reception children-our school has a computerised system which lets information be manipulated to see classes and individual children. And for those like my son with SEN, it's really good, because disparities are obvious, and his talents visible.

The EYFS is not a series of targets-in the sense of trying to get all children to meet all targets-it is a way or recording what they've done. One target can clearly relate to toilet training-but kids aren't being toilet trained because of the target! And it only records what is part of teaching anyway- how is anyone supposed to develop an approach to an individual child if they don't assess their performance at an activity.

Whether the system is used properly in transition to KS1 is another issue, but in practice it's much more handy than the reams of paper I remember from years ago working in reception, with notes on reading or playing but no consistency, and then a handover to Year One which could be 'x is a good boy but not too quick'.

Basically, consistent assessment does not mean target-driven teaching.

where will it ever stop? Will there be targets for 2 and 3 year olds attending nursery The targets start from birth if they attend a nursery setting or child minder

'Learning to read is not 'natural', neither for that matter is playing an instrument, or a sport. They are cultural, and adults choose when a child is to learn these cultural matters. Children's feelings are considered and great efforts to maintain their interest and motivation are made.
Most of the young children at my school are absolutely dying to learn to read!'

Well since we are now in the realm of anecdote, my own DCs learned to read 'naturally'. Most of the children in my older two DCs' classes by about age 7 were 'dying' to learn cursive handwriting. It was presented to them as a marvelous rite of passage and membership in the Cursive Club was held out to them like a carrot.

In the school they attended, the oldest two were taught cursive at age 7. When the other three came along the writing curriculum had changed -- it was decided that teaching them at 7 was taking up too much class time, was too frustrating for many of the children, and was overburdening them with handwriting homework. The school leadership decided after reviewing research and practice elsewhere that leaving it to the following year would mean it would take less time to achieve better results, and leave fewer children feeling they were square pegs forced into round holes. They were right. DD4, who is a lefty, would have failed to write neatly enough to be admitted into the Cursive Club at age 7 except on a mercy basis and would have been utterly miserable as a result. Her printing at that age was barely legible. One more year made a huge difference to her. One more year of improving co-ordination for the whole class resulted in far quicker learning and neater efforts by all.

Yes, adults choose when the children will be exposed to sports, BUT they do so based on spotting some aptitude, realising that the child has developed the necessary co-ordination to participate in sports for instance, and picking the appropriate level 4 year olds do not play football with children of 8 or 9 for instance. When it comes to playing an instrument, aptitude is again a factor, as well as physical ability to handle the instrument. There are some two year olds who can play the piano but not that many. And violins tend to come in small sizes with the learners playing simple tunes to start with, gradually advancing to bigger instruments and more complex and difficult tunes. You don't find many 4 yos playing the trumpet or clarinet. It's about timing and aptitude and readiness. Forcing them into sports or music or any activity that is conducted at a level not geared to their natural ability level, aptitude or interest is going to backfire, causing frustration and feelings of failure and actual failure, which is easier to overcome than the feelings of failure or of being under pressure to perform at an age when a child doesn't handle pressure well. They need a solid foundation of natural development before they can be expected to handle performance pressure.

And no, Malaleuca, in the long run, which is the only perspective that matters in education, most children perform in a manner that can sadly be predicted based on ascertaining facts about their home lives when they are young. Individual teachers do make a difference in the lives of individual children but these are exceptional children and exceptional cases.

Guardian article link again -- reference to the 128 page curriculum disguised as targets for preschool age children which must be adhered to by everyone registered to take care of children. The comparable Danish one is TWO pages long. The EYFS sets 128 pages of benchmarks and standards for babies to 5 yos, 128 pages of them. A requirement of consistent assessment always leads to target driven teaching, and always means leaving children to develop naturally in whatever direction their innate abilities and curiosity leads them gets tossed to the curb, especially when CMs and other preschool workers in the UK generally are not degreed professionals but technicians.

Toilet training, far from being an example of how targets do not affect practice, is in fact a great example of the potential for complete misunderstanding of the concept, rigid adherence to the contents of the curriculum, and pressure on children and caregivers to perform. In the days when most current grannies were young mothers the norms set by 'experts' for aspects of child development such as toilet training were expected to be followed and many of those former young mums have gone on to drive their children and their spouses crazy with their insistence that their grandchildren are too old to be training, too old to be breastfeeding, blah, blah.

The instant you set a certain goal for a certain age bracket, you set up some children for failure, some parents for miserable anxiety, and pressure mounts for caregivers to get the children to perform.

Mrz, do you not think there is madness in the EYFS birth to five approach?

The fact that you can blandly state that there are standards for someone's newborn baby aside from what an HV would look out for a a checkup, to be reported by a CM (who doesn't need a degree in child development) and no less than 117 profile points, with 52 ELGs to cover before the age of 5, while in the care of someone who mightn't know her arse from her elbow basically, makes me shudder.

I'm not a fan of EYFS as you could find out if you did a search on this forum but it is popular with nurseries, childminders, pre schools and childcare workers (not schools )
www.nurseryworld.co.uk/news/1032985/Providers-affirm-support-EYFS-consultation/
www.nurseryworld.co.uk/news/1028657/Eight-ten-nurseries-believe-EYFS-good-children/
www.nurseryworld.co.uk/news/1025260/Dont-change-EYFS-practitioners-say/

www.nurseryworld.co.uk/news/1054893/Pre-school-boosts-literacy-teen-years/

mathanxiety

I think you've misunderstood what EYFS is in practice.

First, it isn't a series of targets to be met by certain ages, it's a series of things children might do within quite rough (especially given the ages concerned) age ranges, such as 30-50 months, 40-60 months and a way of recording them. There is no assessment of childcare providers according to whether kids hit targets, nor is there likely to be. If children don't want to do stuff they don't and the target isn't ticked. Insofar as it has nay effect on the curriculum it's because childcarers are asked to see where children might be, and hence OFFER some of the stuff there. But, personally, there is nothing there I wouldn't expect a half-decent nursery to be aware of anyway.

Neither is it on the whole a prescriptive list of particular stuff-toilet training for instance can be seen as a manifestation of being aware of one's own needs, as can asking for food, asking to be changed, indicating you are ill, hot or cold, appreciating you should wear a mac in the rain etc.

It's 'headline' results are thus a series of sheets measuring progress across a range of activities. Many children, including both my DSs fall onto two sheets for filing purposes. This is not seen as a problem to be taught to or remedied, except for DS1 who is on an IEP for language (and would be without EYFS).

I have a lot of sympathy with what you say about the effects of government publicly intervening by suggesting childcare needs monitoring. But there is also room surely for thinking on the intervention itself. For many of those of us who have seen how DCs stand on the EYFS frameworks they are hugely valuable in undertsanding our children's lives in childcare and feeling reassured by the professionalism of those involved (far more reassured than I would be, given the number of undergrads I churned out yearly, with less information because the people had a degree). I'd be a lot happier about my sons' future lives if I felt all SAHPs in my area had the same flexible means for thinking about children's needs, and at lot less narked at all the stupid 'when did DC eat, throw up, pick nose, get pissed and trash the house' threads on MN.

Sorry, you're ace generally, but find this whole thing a bit odd given my experiences of the EYFS.

Thanks for those interesting articles Mrz. I have known many childminders leave the profession though as they have found the EYFS too prescriptive. The childminders say they are there to care for children and feel that that role is going towards one of a teacher. I've also hear the government will be scrapping the EYFS but god only knows what they'll replace it with. I think there need to be more early years specialists teaching nursery - year two. Such an interesting age group!

I know many childminders who also gave up because of EYFS yet the official review suggests most love it.

'Nappy curriculum' is improving education, claims Ofsted

Foundation stage hits reception teachers hard

Teachers hail 'nappy' plan

interestingly the last article ran while this discuss was taking place