Re(2): reading

Martin Owen (Martin_Owen who-is-at rem.bangor.ac.uk)
Fri, 25 Jun 1999 10:25:04 +0100

We live in interesting times:
Martin
The Guardian, London (alas no longer Manchester)
23 June 1999, The Guardian, p.5
Play is out, early learning is in / Home News
John Carvel, Education Editor

"Minister backs structured nursery schooling and warns days of children
colouring and cutting are over

Children should start learning to read, write and count as young as three,
and should have mastered the rudiments before the end of their first year
in primary school, the government said yesterday as minister set out to
bury the idea that early childhood is a time for carefree play.

Margaret Hodge, the education minister, said children from disadvantaged
backgrounds deserved the
well-structured nursery education that was seen as a matter of course in
middle class homes.

Play in playgroups and nurseries should be "purposeful''. The days of
toddlers "colouring, cutting and pasting''
are over. "

"Targets for toddlers

Naming and sounding all the letters of the alphabet;

Reading a range of common words and simple sentences
independently;

Showing comprehension of stories;

Holding a pencil effectively and forming recognisable letters;

Using phonetic knowledge to make plausible attempts at complex
words;

Writing their own names and forming sentences, sometimes using
punctuation;

Counting reliably up to 10 everyday objects:

Recognising numerals 1 to 9;

Understanding the vocabulary of adding and subtracting;

Asking about why things happen and how things work."