Does the Model of Language in the National Literacy Strategy Create Failure for Pupils from Differing Language Backgrounds?

The National Literacy Strategy (NLS) was introduced by the government in the wake of the hotly debated issue of falling educational standards in the UK. All schools were required to adopt the NLS Literacy Hour unless they could show their preferred programme would result in raised levels of achievement. My experience of delivering the Literacy Hour has been a process of adaptation to the needs of my pupils, who are drawn mainly from groups whose language backgrounds differ from that which is dominant in school. I have found that the requirements of NLS, together with many of the commercial resources used to teach it, are not appropriate for pupils from these groups and a question arose: is it the pupils who are in some way deficient or is it the approach and the resources being used? This article takes a case study of the use of a commercially produced resource to explore the model of language implicit in NLS, the kinds of resources it generates and the ways in which this creates failure in pupils from different language backgrounds. It then considers the New Literacy Studies and their implications for an alteration in our approach.     

The Scaffolding of Emergent Literacy Skills in the Home Environment: A Case Study

The ways in which parent-child interactions can encourage the development of emergent literacy skills in young children remains to be fully explored. The present report describes how one parent scaffolded her young child’s emergent writing and letter knowledge in the home. Environmental print provided many rich and meaningful examples for the parent to show that print conveys meaning and is constructed with letters that have names and make sounds. The parent used idiomorphs, a multisensory approach incorporating the tracing of letters and whole body movements, and common household objects to guide the child’s learning of letter names, sounds, and shapes. Emergent writing skills were scaffolded by using directional language and by the child copying environmental print. The strategies and examples that are described may give guidance to parents and teachers on how to provide engaging opportunities for literacy learning in the home environment or in an early educational context.     

Educational records: I Sources for the history of English primary schools

Abstract:

This paper examines ways in which inter‐relationships between knowledge and skills can lead to important links between education and training to the considerable benefit of each. In particular it reviews the variety of ways in which the acquisition of knowledge (in the widest sense of the term) can contribute to the development of competences and conversely the variety of ways in which the development of a broad range of skills (including competences) can contribute to the acquisition of knowledge.