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.

Looking through that report, I think the authors were inclined to come down on the side of initially teaching reading in the first language or the language the child was most immersed in at home.

Check out the video'Sweden- Early Years' on teachers' TV - it will make you want to move to Sweden in a flash!

The problem is we don't live in Sweden and the British Government is never going to be in a position to invest in the same way the Swedish government has.
We have legal ratios in reception of 1 teacher to 30 pupils and operate on a shoestring supplementing resources from our wages ... having said that adopting a system that suits one nation's culture won't guarantee success in a very different culture.

Yes, of course it's not as simple as replacing the British system with a Swedish one but we could look to the country a bit more for improvements in our own system. The British don't want to pay high taxes to fund education and healthcare whereas in Sweden they do pay higher taxes and get what they pay for!!

mathanxiety - all the books and research I have read on bilingualism back up my own (hardly original) gut feeling that it is going to be a lot easier for any child to learn to read in its first language than in any other, with the proviso that the teaching method is good and systematic.

The question I have is whether it is really so crucial for properly bilingual children to learn master reading in one language first before attempting to read in the other. I very tentatively got my DD started on reading in English outside school just before she started learning her letters and sounds in French. I did lay off for four months when she started French Year 1 and was reading/writing very intensively... though with hindsight I may have been overly cautious!

As I said cultural differences ... in Scandinavia education has a much higher status.

As part of my MA I had the opportunity to link with a school in Finland and I've also attended workshops with Professor Stig Brostrom and it's clear that public opinion is very, very different.

Yes, education has a much higher status as you say and teachers are valued too. How do you mean public opinion is very different? I sometimes wonder what school is for in this country. Interesting you had the opportunity to link with a school in Finland. What was that like? Were the children more motivated? Were the class sizes smaller?

Average class sizes around 15
Lots of time outdoors -shorter school day- no testing - teachers free to decide how they teach

Sounds brilliant. Children in Britain spend the longest time in school and are tested more than any other nation. Teachers are not trusted here. It's all so sad.

Off hand both France and the USA have longer school days than the UK but there are other countries.

China has incredibly long school days. Y1 kids attend school till 6:00pm - and then have homework on top of that.

Of course, Chinese is probably the hardest language to learn to read in the world........

I think the number of hours British kids spend in school is fairly standard - it's just that in sunnier climes they start school earlier, and can therefore fit in 5 hours of schooling before lunch......

France has very long school days, but far fewer days are actually spent at school than in most other countries. So school days are very intense but they leave plenty of time for holidays to do other things, and French children traditionally do a lot of sports and extra-curricular activities in the holidays as opposed to after school. It's a different organisation - not necessarily worse.

School in the US tend to be 7 hours a day from First Grade on (age 6 >); my DCs all started at 8 and went to 3. Kindergartens can be half day or a shorter full day though. Lots of children do activities after school the availability of so much in the way of sports facilities and enthusiastic volunteer and paid coaches, and Title IX, is both a blessing and a curse. Hordes of children I knew did dancing and music after school. Summer is the high season for sports and camps. It's a nightmare for working parents to arrange childcare and transportation for children during the summer months.

DD1 did swimming and water polo in high school beginning at 5.30 am, then school from 8 to 3, then swimming again to 5.30 pm, or she had a meet with travel immediately after school. Some nights she got home at 9.30 with four hours of homework still to finish. She did badminton too, when the swimming season was mercifully over. Same early morning start for training and same training after school however. DS did football and practiced every day during the summer from 7.30 to 2 in the hot sun, with weight training all winter from 5.30 am to 7.30 am.

Summer holidays tend to be much longer in the US (and in many Irish schools too) than in the UK. Three months, give or take, is the norm, with a Christmas holiday (two weeks) and spring break or Easter (about a week). Not so many mid term breaks in the US, but there are a good few days off here and there, especially in late January and February, and some school districts take off the Jewish holidays and Good Friday too.

I'm still not used to the newfangled striking out obviously, and I have no clue what I did there...

Our head visited schools in China last year (to make exchange links - our panda went to for the sights) and classes are huge and all learning is by rote even playing the piano. China has the longest school year too 251 days

Yes, I was comparing UK with rest of Uk. I know about the class sizes and discipline and way of teaching because I have a Chinese friend who was a teacher in China and has worked in very tough secondary schools in London. She is shocked by the lack of respect for teachers and the low expectations. Yes, can imagine all learning is rote but I think this country has gone too far the other way!!! Ofsted love teachers to 'entertain' and don't like it when teachers stand at the front teaching the kids something! Will be buying the book 'To Miss With Love' about a secondary school teacher's experiences...

With the rest of Europe I mean!

Many European school days seem shorter but don't have a lunch break so actual teaching time is similar.

Nah, a lot of European schools finish after the children have lunch (8-1). So they are at school for a shorter length of time but manage to learn more. Once they start school at 6 or 7, they REALLY start to learn. 45 minute lessons with course books etc

The DCs' classes in the US in elementary school were 45 mins each, with a short snack break mid-morning and a 45 minute lunch. Heavy hardback books for every subject, plus workbooks and folders. High school had 48 minute classes and ran three lunch periods to accommodate everyone in the cafeterias.

Belgium 8.30 - 3.30 with lunch break
Spain 9.00 - 5.00 hour lunch break
Sweden 8.15 - 3.30
Greece pupils attend 8.30 - 1.30 no lunch or 2.00 -7.00
Germany/Switzerland 7.30 /8.00 - 1.00 no lunch
Denmark 8.00 -3.00

I've been unable to keep up with this thread in the last week or so but I do think that it's very difficult to transport one culture to another country. We have let education become so dumbed down, expectations so low, fear of 'teaching' so great, it's very hard to see how we can turn things around. Even if children did return to a play-based education until they were 6 or 7, it could be a repeat of the Inner London experiment of the 1970s - lots of lovely things going on, a laissez-faire attitude to reading and a growth in rates of illiteracy. Steiner schools, too, where reading is discouraged until children are 7, has a poor record in producing literate children.

Student teachers aren't taught how to teach children to read - and there is absolutely no grounds for believing that, with our complex orthography, children would 'pick it up' with far more ease after a play/exploration/oral language- rich 3 years in school. Until there is uniform understanding of how to teach children to read, and responsibility is taken by a school when a child's life is blighted by mis-instruction, then it seems reckless to even consider a later start.

Were training colleges to become responsible for teaching their student teachers about early reading instruction, were there to be an understanding that poor reading skills = poor instruction, then there could be a case made for a later start.

Ok mrz point taken! But these kids aren't 4 when they have such long days, are they? Am thinking of Lithuania, Croatia, Slovenia, Albania, Italy and Poland where they start early in the morning and finish after lunch.

Well, the approach of leaving reading until later does seem to work in other countries allchildrenreading. We start learning to read early and still have high levels of illiteracy.

England
In England, schools must be open for at least 380 half day sessions each school year. The dates of school terms are not fixed nationally; they are set, depending on the legal category of the school, by the local authority (LA) or school governing body. Although school holidays generally cover the same core periods, exact dates may vary between schools and authorities. There is currently some movement towards the adoption of a standard school year, which would be consistent year on year. A number of LAs have begun to introduce this model.
Ireland
183 days in primary education, six- to 12-year-olds; 179 days in secondary education 12-to-15-year-olds.
Wales
In Wales, schools must be open for at least 380 half day sessions each school year. The dates of school terms are not fixed nationally; they are set, depending on the legal category of the school, by the local authority (LA) or school governing body. Although school holidays generally cover the same core periods, exact dates may vary between schools and authorities.
France
The school calendar is fixed by the Minister for National Education, who also determines the dates of school holidays in each of the three zones in metropolitan France. There are three distinct zones (A, B and C) to ensure staggered holidays.
?
Germany
Teaching may be organised on the basis of a five-or six-day week. Following the five-day week model, teaching usually takes place on 188 days a year on average and 208 days for the six-day week model.
Hungary
There are three, one-week holidays during the autumn, winter and spring, and a long summer break.
Italy
The Ministry of Public Education sets guidelines for terms and holiday periods, the dates of public holidays and final examinations. Since 1999, headteachers have had some flexibility in implementing these.
Netherlands
Dates for the summer holidays are decided by the Ministry; the main holiday period is staggered over the three regions (northern, central and southern) into which the country is divided for this purpose (compulsory dates for all schools); all other holidays are recommended by the Ministry. The Minister recommends a period of one week?s holiday after every seven to eight weeks of school.
Spain
175 days at secondary level (12+), 180 days for six-to 12-year-olds in primary education.
Sweden
The teaching year comprises 40 weeks which should not be less than 178 working days and not more than 190.
?
Australia
In Tasmania, exceptionally, there are 3 terms.
?
Canada
The school year averages 180 to 200 teaching days over the period from September to late June.
Japan
The statutory minimum length of the elementary school year (minimum number of teaching weeks per year) is 35 weeks. For children in Year 1, however, it is 34 weeks.
New Zealand
197 days in primary phase education (five- to-12-year olds); 190 days for 12/13- to 16-year-olds (expressed as half day sessions). The Ministry of Education sets term dates but schools have limited flexibility in implementing them.

Magdalen - since the laissez-faire days of the 70s and 80s literacy rates have improved substantially. They are still shockingly low. Teachers aren't taught how to instruct children, ergo the blame for malinstruction is laid at the feet of feckless parents, stupid children, children with inherent problems, too much telly etc. In other words, anything but the instruction. Since the emphasis on synthetic phonics 4/5 years ago, those teachers who understand how to use a structured SP programme have seen dramatic improvements.

English children have been exposed to the richest children's literature in the world - perhaps there's some significance in the fact that countries where children start learning to read later on the whole produce children who are less well-read?

The situation has changed - as schools have become more prescriptive, teachers less spontaneous ( in part, because of government/parental concern following the destructive play-led decades)book reading - and music provision - have declined.

Has anyone mentioned Spain? All 5 year olds are expected to learn to read English from 2012, I understand.