One of the newest Government agendas is focused on narrowing the gap between the most and least disadvantaged children and families in society. Emphasis has been placed on statistics that show white working class boys, in particular, achieving least in schools and being left with very low levels of literacy and communication.
These least successful children are performing less well than children with English as an additional language and worse than boys of Afro-Caribbean origin. In a bid to counteract poor achievement in basic skills, and in response to the Rose Review on the limitations of current teaching of reading and writing, the Primary National Strategies team has produced the 'Letters and Sounds' guidance.
This is a phonics teaching package, full of useful ideas and advice, aimed at improving outcomes for children's learning. Practitioners should use it alongside the Early Years Foundation Stage guidance to help give young children the best start in communication, language and literacy.
The Government's intention for this programme is that it should be delivered in a very structured and controlled manner, with children gaining focused daily practice. It can be used to help practitioners reflect on their own knowledge of how children learn and how they should extend children's skills.
THE MESSAGE
The 'Letters and Sounds' pack contains guidance notes for practitioners, a poster explaining the principles of the phonics programme, a CD-Rom with a number of good-practice examples, and a handbook to support the implementation of the programme within Key Stage 1.
The purpose of the guidance is to support the all-round development of children's communication skills from the earliest opportunity. It highlights the importance of active learning and helping children use their senses in constructive ways. Through challenging activities, this very focused teaching tool seeks to empower children to gain confidence with phonics - the sounds of letters - and learn how they fit together to make words.
The guidance makes reference to a wide range of experience that children should have from the earliest age to develop communication skills. It emphasises the role of the adult in supporting children's learning.
The 'Letters and Sounds' guidance fits well with the Early Years Foundation Stage to inspire practitioners to make the right choices about how to plan lively and stimulating activities and create environments that promote listening, speaking, singing and enjoying stories and rhymes.
The theory of the programme is that language can be decoded and that the trick of reading and writing is to know how to break down words into their constituent sounds, which are called phonemes.
Another important element of the programme is that children are offered lots and lots of practice in using and playing with words. Language learning can be fun and children who enjoy it will develop confidence in speaking, listening and reading.
COMMUNICATION SUPPORT
Both finding a voice and feeling confident to use it are essential foundations for the development of good literacy skills and the ability to communicate ideas and feelings. An enthusiastic learner is one who responds positively to the initiatives offered through a variety of challenges.
Children love to copy adults and older children, so it is important for them to be exposed to clear and well-spoken language. Adults with a rich vocabulary and the ability to convey a depth of knowledge are more likely to influence how children think and vocalise their experiences.
The guidance offers positive support to help children develop the ability to listen, to understand and to copy speech. The programme underlines the mechanisms needed to help children decipher words and look for similarities and differences in how they look and sound. It helps clarify how children can be taught in a structured way, building on their knowledge of the alphabet, the initial sounds of letters, and interpreting the shape and feel of words.
USE OF THE PROGRAMME
The exciting part of the new guidance is that it offers ways of working with children that are timeless and that depend fundamentally on providing a rich language environment. The programme is divided into six phases that have been written for use up to the end of Key Stage 1.
The first stage is directed at early years practitioners. It invites them to work purposefully with children instilling basic skills in listening, extending vocabulary, speaking confidently, discriminating phonemes, reproducing phonemes in the correct order to build words, and using verbal communication to segment words into phonemes.
The exercises in phase one will encourage practitioners to help children play with language. Recommendations include making best use of indoors and outdoors provision to stimulate discussion and engage children in making discoveries about the world.
The package features new jargon such as 'listening walks' and 'listening boxes', which gives the impression that the content offered in this programme is new and different. In fact, listening walks are opportunities for children to listen to natural sounds such as birds singing, bees buzzing, and leaves rustling in the wind.
Listening boxes are like treasure boxes, containing collections of objects that make noises which children can identify one at a time. The importance of these sorts of listening activities is that children have to be still and use their senses to focus attention on a single subject. They are expected to make judgements about what they hear and then label the sounds according to their knowledge of the natural and made world, and the words they have to describe or categorise it.
Adults must use clear and precise language to have the greatest impact on children's speech patterns and their ability to express themselves coherently. Practitioners should make sure that they not only ask children open-ended questions, but also that they have an extensive vocabulary, good grammar and the ability to be very engaging in conversation, using facial expressions, a range of voice pitches and gestures to enliven speech and delivery.
ADVANTAGES
This programme is about highlighting speech and language practice to improve skills in listening and speaking. It emphasises the way that children need repeated experiences of rhyme, alliteration, singing and listening to stories so that the best groundwork is laid for them to develop a love of spoken and written language.
It is a package that can be delivered in a very structured way to focus on communication, language and literacy, or used in conjunction with the Early Years Foundation Stage to develop skills in all other areas of learning.
From this point of view, the 'Letters and Sounds' programme is helpful to everyone, because it makes explicit how adults should behave and how children should be stimulated to learn effectively.
It gives credence to experiential and interactive learning, and refocuses on the importance of children using their senses to understand the world and their impact on it.
The spirit of the programme lies in its challenge to adults to improve the way they speak and act around children. Children's experiences can be made more meaningful because they are enjoyable and because the effect of them can be vocalised. Children need good reasons to communicate and good role models to emulate. This programme uses tried and tested principles on which to build children's skills.
MORE INFORMATION
- For more information about 'Letters and Sounds' go to www.nationalstrategies.co.uk. To order a free copy phone 0845 6022260 or e-mail: dfes@prolog.uk.com
- Part 2 on 'Letters and Sounds' and birth to threes will be published on 17 July
LINKS TO EYFS GUIDANCE
- UC 1.1 Child Development
- PR 2.2 Supporting Learning
- EE 3.2 Supporting Every Child
- L&D 4.1 Play and Exploration
- L&D 4.2 Active Learning
- L&D 4.3 Creativity and Critical Thinking.