Boost family learning to close skills gap

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 National Literacy Trust – Literacy news‎, 18 Oct 2013

 

Millions of children in England and Wales are held back by their parents’ poor basic skills, suggests a report.

Involving the whole family in learning can boost educational attainment across generations and should be integral to schools says the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE).

NIACE have today launched a high-level Inquiry, which among other recommendations – urges the government to invest in family learning which will help to cut the costs of spending on vulnerable families.

The NIACE team also looked at research from national and local government, Ofsted and from educational, family and children’s charities.

They found “particularly compelling evidence that family language and maths programmes benefit children’s skills as well as those of their parents and carers”.

They also found evidence of wider benefits from improving adults’ confidence and self-esteem to reducing ill health, unemployment and re-offending.

“Adults whose parents have low levels of education are eight times more likely to have poor proficiency in literacy than adults whose parents had higher levels of education,” writes Valerie Howarth in her foreword.

First in UK to pilot new reading program

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Rhondda Cynon Taff Gazette, 15th October, 2013

 

Parents and carers flock to ‘Story Talk’ workshops to support their children’s reading for meaning and enjoyment at home.

A South Wales primary school is at the centre of a pioneering educational project, which aims to give young children a love of reading for meaning that develops comprehension skills, and involves parents in the process.

Coed-y-Lan School in Pontypridd is undertaking a pilot of ‘SPECtacular Story Talk’, a skills-based programme which provides a gentle introduction to reading for enjoyment and understanding, showing parents and children how to share and explore books together.

‘SPEC’ refers to the set of comprehension skills in the programmes that help children to make meaning of text for themselves: summarising, predicting, enquiry and clarifying.

“The response has been even greater than we expected and early feedback from parents has been extremely positive,” said creator Donna Thomson, of Think2Read, the not-for-profit company which runs the programme. “We plan to extend the number of sessions to accommodate the extra parents who want to take part.”

“Children, teachers and parents are particularly excited by Think2Read’s interactive ‘SPECtacular Story Talk’ resources that provide them with memorable and easy to apply reading strategies for use in the classroom or at home”.

She added: “The involvement of parents in their child’s education is known to be hugely beneficial: it promotes important two-way communication between the school and the family, and fosters common aims that provides all-round support for the child.”

The Coed-y-Lan pilot is the first in the UK, and involves:

  • Think2Read and the school evaluating the impact of the ‘SPECtacular Story Talk’ programme on young children’s reading for meaning and enjoyment at home and in school (Nursery, Reception and Year 1).
  • Family workshop running in tandem with ‘Story Talk’, involving Nursery, Reception and Year 1 – understanding meaning through picture book talk using a familiar story.
  • Two weekly two -hour workshops for families with children aged 3 – 6 years.
  • Parents and carers receiving a demonstration of how to use ‘Story Talk’ interactive book marks to support their children’s reading for meaning at home.

“The programme benefits children, parents and teachers,” said Ms Thomson.

“Children love the interaction with their parents or carers. They enjoy taking part in the simple reading for meaning steps with them. They are shown how to discuss and explore pictures and text with confidence which encourages a love of books, reading for pleasure, and develops communication and reading skills.

“For parents and carers, it provides understanding of the processes involved in reading other than decoding, and this encourages them to discuss the stories in greater depth with their children, giving a structure for them to support reading for meaning at home.

“Then for teachers, it improves communication between families and school, providing a structure for teaching of early comprehension skills in line with Think2Read’s whole-school ‘SPECtacular Reading Mission’ programme for independent reading and learning.

“It’s especially appropriate for Wales, because Think2Read fits in with Wales’ literacy framework and new curriculum by tackling the teaching of comprehension and cross-curricular literacy head-on,” she added. “This is because it explicitly teaches young children how to independently identify and apply core reading strategies and questioning techniques that support understanding of text across the curriculum.”

Coed-y-Lan’s headteacher , Robert James added: “Think2Read fulfills most of the skills of the new curriculum in Wales because it asks children to summarise, predict, evaluate and make connections when they read text – in other words to understand, and enjoy, what they are reading.

“Also, it helps teachers because it has a specific framework of teaching ideas. Unlike other schemes where you have text books and group readers, this is all ICT-based. For example you have a Powerpoint on the screen that takes the children and the teacher through the various skills and the questions in the lesson.

“That gives us real structure to what we do. The teachers love it and the children have really taken to it like ducks to water, and it has been absolutely marvellous for them – because they are given specific roles, for example scribe or negotiator – so they are learning collaborative skills too.”

Think2Read is a not-for-profit UK-based educational project committed to help teachers fulfil the reading comprehension and learning potential of children of all abilities.

Its creator Donna Thomson is a researcher, primary educational writer and reading comprehension specialist with 15 years’ experience of supporting and extending children with reading and writing difficulties.

‘SPECtacular Story Talk’, which is being piloted at Coed-y-Lan, is the first part of a three-stage Think2Read programme, which aims to develop children’s literacy and comprehension skills throughout primary school.

Ms Thomson added: “‘When you see how empowering it is for six- year-olds to ask and answer their own in-depth questions about text and pictures as they read to support their understanding, it makes you realise just what could be achieved if you begin the reading journey for them at an earlier age through ‘talk’ and discussion about books at home with their parents.”

Making reading fun for kids and parents

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News Wales Education, Oct. 15th, 2013

 

A South Wales primary school is the first in the UK to pilot a new reading programme which aims to give young children a love of reading for meaning that develops comprehension skills and involves parents in the process.

Coed-y-Lan School in Pontypridd is undertaking a pilot of ‘SPECtacular Story Talk’, a skills-based programme which provides a gentle introduction to reading for enjoyment and understanding, showing parents and children how to share and explore books together.

‘SPEC’ refers to the set of comprehension skills in the programmes that help children to make meaning of text for themselves: summarising, predicting, enquiry and clarifying.

“The response has been even greater than we expected and early feedback from parents has been extremely positive,” said creator Donna Thomson, of Think2Read, the not-for-profit company which runs the programme. “We plan to extend the number of sessions to accommodate the extra parents who want to take part.”

“Children, teachers and parents are particularly excited by Think2Read’s interactive ‘SPECtacular Story Talk’ resources that provide them with memorable and easy to apply reading strategies for use in the classroom or at home”.

She added: “The involvement of parents in their child’s education is known to be hugely beneficial: it promotes important two-way communication between the school and the family, and fosters common aims that provides all-round support for the child.”

Where do you stand on phonics?

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Donna Thomson Oct. 2013 (article for ‘Education for Everybody’ magazine)

 

Primary literacy specialist, Donna Thomson, has spoken out, against the practice of teaching young children only synthetic phonics.

She believes there is a “narrow-minded and bullish obsession with synthetic phonics, which is proving harmful to our children’s futures.”

The method has been used in England for nearly 10 years and is often described as a “back to basics” system. It first teaches children the sounds of letters and how they blend into words, before moving to combinations that make up words.

Donna Thomson said: “Successive governments have made synthetic phonics the lynchpin of their efforts to improve literacy, but too many children are reading without understanding; they simply learn to ‘de-code’ the words.”

Her views come hot on the heels of a report by the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) which placed England near the bottom of an international literacy tests league.

The OECD study showed England had slipped to 22 out of a total of 24 countries.

“If we want our children’s literacy to improve and for reading to become a pleasure, we need to give them the skills that support ‘a whole reading’ experience from the start,” says Ms Thomson, a researcher, primary educational writer and reading comprehension specialist with 15 years’ experience of supporting and extending children with reading and writing difficulties.

She says teaching children how to make meaning gives them the tools to question, understand and make sense of words, images and concepts within context as well as make links to problem solve and understand others’ points of view. It also allows them to develop curiosity, to reason, justify and express themselves clearly.

“All of these skills are the sorts of soft skills that employers are crying out for, yet we are not even furnishing our youngest children with them – we are giving them a shameful diet of synthetic phonics that does not produce the independent readers, and cross-curricular learners we are led to believe it does,” adds Ms Thomson.

In a bid to redress the balance, she is now working with individual headteachers in England and Wales who also think ‘phonics is not enough’.

Wales for instance, has developed a new literacy framework – after the Education and Skills department recognised the need to tackle the teaching of comprehension and cross-curricular literacy head-on.

A recent pilot project with very young children in Wales has been a resounding success, Headteacher at Coed-y-Lan school, Robert James said: “This Think2Read project fulfils most of the skills of the new curriculum in Wales because it asks children to summarise, predict, evaluate and make connections when they read text – in other words to understand, and enjoy, what they are reading.”

Interestingly of the parents who responded to a questionnaire about the Coed-y-lan pilot 94.6 per cent thought their child was beginning to ask more questions when reading a book and the same number reckoned their child was more interested in books.

Ms Thomson said: “‘When you see how empowering it is for six- year-olds to ask and answer their own in-depth questions about text and pictures as they read to support their understanding, it makes you realise just what could be achieved if you begin the reading journey for them at an earlier age through ‘talk’ and discussion about books at school and at home with their parents.”

Next year Ms Thomson will be working with primary schools in South Yorkshire – in an area of high social deprivation, with generations of jobless.

She explained: “The project in Yorkshire is unique. While working with young children (four and five-year-olds) we will also be focussing on parents. Many of these parents will have never been employed and come from a long line of poor education and unemployment. By learning the skills that develop and support their children’s reading and learning – the process will unlock their own potential and provide them with aspirations for further learning alongside their children’s experience. It will also foster important relationships between the community and the school.”

The Yorkshire project is in line with a report last week, which said millions of children in England, and Wales were being held back by their parents’ poor basic skills.

The National Institute of Adult Continuing Education – NIACE – report said involving the whole family in learning can boost educational attainment across generations and should be integral to schools.

Governments, it said, should give family learning more support.

It’s a sentiment echoed by Ms Thomson. “If we want a nation of literate young people we need to start teaching four and five-year- olds how to use strategies for making meaning and asking and answering their own questions about information at home and in school.

“Changing the way that we teach children reading and literacy in their formative years will have a profound and positive effect on our children’s futures for generations to come, I don’t think I can overestimate the effect this could have on our economy in years to come.”