I was fascinated to discover information on how the importance of phonemic awareness was discovered. After World War II the U.S. Government looked for ways to ease the transition back into life for disabled veterans, including those who returned home blinded in battle. A young psychologist, Alvin Liberman, was tasked with creating a reading machine for the blind. The idea was to create a machine that could vocalize print as a finger ran over Braille letters.
Although the machine worked it proved too slow at articulating the individual sounds to resemble speech. Listeners found it impossible to join the machine’s sounds together to make any sense out of them. However, Liberman’s team of scientists had stumbled upon a new under¬standing of the reading process.
They had unintentionally identified the complicated relationship between the language that we read [letters] and the lan¬guage that we speak [sounds] and discovered one of the primary reasons it can be hard to learn how to read. Just as the blind listeners could not make sense out of the sounds coming from the reading machine, struggling readers have a hard time blending together the different sounds that make up a word.
Many young learners find it incredibly difficult to distinguish the small segments of sounds – “phonemic awareness”. Their difficulty has nothing to do with an ability to recognize the individual letters but what word they form when strung together. Well over a third of all beginning readers have difficulty identifying, discriminating, and isolating sounds.
Phonemes are the sounds that make up spoken words not the individual letters. For example, the word ‘on’ is made up of two phonemes: /o/ and /n/. We hear them as a single word because we blend the individual phonemes into a unit as we pronounce the word. Clusters of letters that represent single sounds (th, sh, oo, ough, or ck) are also important for children to be aware of. The word ‘though’ is not de-codable just by the individual letter sounds, there needs to be an understanding of the phonetic sounds too. Phonemes are not the sounds that letters make but the sounds of speech that can be represented by letters.
Effective reading instruction needs to include teaching of phonemic awareness and phonics. Helping your child to recognise the sounds the letters make and how they combine is as important as understanding the letters themselves.
Our kids have grown up with media all around them. It is not surprising that they are gaining access to this media on an increasing basis. But children having access should mean that we try to protect them. A recent report by Ofcom investigating the media literacy among UK children shows some alarming results.
It is not surprising that households with children aged 5-15 have high levels of take-up of the main media platforms, e.g. digital TV, games consoles and the internet. What is interesting is how the data shows that children are becoming more fluent in media at a much younger age.
85% of children aged 5–7 live in a household with a games console, which is as high as 90% in households with boys.
Almost every child had access to a TV in their house, but what I found surprising was that 47% of 5-7s have access to a TV in their own bedrooms.
There has also been an increase in the number of younger children (aged 5-7) using the internet at home. Two thirds of children [66%] in this age bracket are using the internet. This increase does not appear to be the result of increased internet take-up within the home, suggesting that children in this age group are starting to use the internet at home at a younger age.
Children aged 5-7 mostly use the internet at least weekly for games (30%), schoolwork (26%) and information (15%).
The majority of parents say they trust their child to use the internet safely. However less than half of parents whose child uses the internet at home (45%) say they have internet controls or filtering software installed – fewer have set safe search settings.
The internet and digital media can be an amazing resource for our kids to learn and to play. For me the data shows an alarming trend where children can access/view content without parents being present or proper controls in place. As adults we need to make sure they are protected as well as ensuring they gain balanced access between fun and educational content.
Children’s Book Week is celebrated in the UK on 5 - 11 October 2009. This year’s theme is words and pictures – focusing on books which spark the imagination by combining superb illustrations with magical language. Award winning digital children’s book publisher, Ebooks4Kidz Ltd, joins in the celebrations by offering customers up to 75% off their normal retail prices.
The founder of Ebooks4Kidz Ltd, Jeanette McLeod, said “Our passion is to spark children’s imaginations and love of reading by bringing our books to life. It fits so well with what Children’s Book Week is trying to achieve. So we decided to celebrate Children’s Book Week by offering customers substantial discounts on many of the interactive digital children’s books we have available. That way our products are even more accessible to parents who want their kids to develop their literacy skills and love of reading books. Our passion is to spark children’s imaginations with our animated illustrations and to bring the stories to life with automatic page turning. Kids love the ability to listen to the story being read aloud, following along with the narrator as the words highlight. For emerging independent readers they can have complete control to read the books themselves and click on any unfamiliar words to hear them spoken. Our passion is to get children reading more by combining their love of technology with great stories and fantastic illustrations. For less than the price of a cup of coffee children can be truly inspired by words and pictures as they both come to life.”
Independent children’s ebook publisher Ebooks4Kidz Ltd is offering up to 75% off a selection of their children’s digital books available on their website http://www.wizz-e.com.
Here’s a video which looks at how to learn the alphabet in a new way. Has anyone tried this method with kids? I’m interested to find out if this works.
The report published by Cranfield School of Management (UK) concludes that technology addiction amongst teenagers is having a disruptive effect on their learning.
The study of 267 pupils aged 11 to 18 found 63% felt addicted to the internet and 53% to their mobile phones.
They found 62% first used or owned a computer before the age of eight, 80% first used the internet between the ages of five and 10, 58% first used a mobile phone between the ages of eight and 10 and 58% have had access to a social networking sites between the ages of eleven and 13.
Over half (53.2%) indicated they spent up to around 30 minutes a day on their mobile, while 17% said they spent at least three hours on their mobile.
Over 30% reported spending between one to two hours a day using the internet and 26% said they spent up to six or more hours a day.
Over a third (39%) admitted that text shortcuts damaged the quality of their written English, particularly when it came to spelling.
And 84% openly admitted copying chunks of information from the internet into their homework or projects on a number of occasions. Pupils said the internet was by far the largest source of information for such work, with over 90% saying they used it compared with 43% who said books.
Their report concluded that modern gadgets worsened pupils’ spelling and concentration, encouraged plagiarism and disrupted lessons.
Yet nothing was reported about the positive impact of living in a highly connected, information rich world. It is easy for us to take this research and harp back to a time gone by, but is it really a bad thing that children today can readily access vast amounts of information? Shouldn’t education be about how to use this information and the technological tools available to enhance their learning? We have to find out what motivates the learner, provide meaningful content in “their world” and help them to use all technology available to them.
I came across this research report recently. It is still shocking to me that despite all the research available that there is a lack of awareness that reading to children and spending time on literacy activities between 3 – 5 years old is vital for their future success.
According to the survey 95% of Americans consider early childhood literacy an important problem, but they do not know that reading to children between the ages of 3-5 has long-term consequences for a child’s academic achievement and life-long success.
75% of the population is completely unaware that nearly 61% of low-income
families do not have any age appropriate books in their homes.
63% did not know that poverty is the best predictor of whether or not a child
will achieve in school.
53% are unaware that nearly one-half of children from low-income
communities start first grade up to two years behind their peers.
Research proves that children who enter kindergarten behind their peers will most likely never catch up and are three to four times more likely to drop out in later years. However, this new survey data shows that only 18% of Americans know that children who lack early literacy skills are less likely to succeed as adults.
The facts are staring us in the face. We need to read to our children. We need to make it part of their everyday routine to give them the best start we can.Find different formats to expose children to reading as much as you can. Make it a fun and enjoyable experience for everyone. Read, read and then read some more!
Great video showing how kids are engaging and learning using technology. We should be harnessing this enthusiasm and encouraging children to learn using the great applications that are available. If learning is fun and engaging kids are more open to learn. What do you think?
The NPD Group, in the USA, has released a new study called “Kids & Cross-Entertainment Behaviour Report”. Some findings;
* Households that have kids under 12 account for 45% of total videogame industry sales.
* 57% of kids ages 2 to 12 play videogames.
* 62% of kids ages 2 to 12 use a computer for leisure activities outside of school work.
* There are 53.4 million kids ages 12 and under in the U.S.
* Kids under 12 account for 17% of the population of the United States.
* 75% of the tween group play videogames.
* 81% of the tween group use a computer for leisure activities outside of school.
60% of children ages 6-10 ues the internet across Eurpope – this is as high as 87% in countries such as the UK.
By 2008, 6-17 year olds in all EC countries were much more likely to use the internet at home (65%) than school (57%) or anywhere else, and 34% are now going online using their own computer.
Livingstone, S, and Haddon, L (2009)
EU Kids Online: Final report. LSE, London: EU Kids Online.
(EC Safer Internet Plus Programme Deliverable D6.5)
So we might as well face up to the fact and start providing these kids with educational resources where they can learn whilst having fun. With the ever increasing rise in young children using video games, technology and the internet we must strive to engage them on their ground. Let’s work with them not against them.
For me, literacy is a concept that is not easy to define in the 21st Century. At a basic level, it could be defined as the ability to read and write. Reading and writing used to be a relatively privileged activity not that long ago. Yet we expect, and indeed should expect, that today every child should be able to read and write. But is that enough in the 21st Century to be really literate?
Massive advancements in technology have led to the need for new and different type of literacy skills. How are we helping children to keep up with this? Is it by chance or design?
At the click of a mouse, it is possible to retrieve information on the World-wide web, connect with people across the globe, research, investigate, comment and contribute on an extraordinary range of sources from all over the world. Are our children in danger of growing up in a world of information overload?
They will need the ability to access, process, filter, evaluate, combine and use the information to their advantage which depends on a different set of skills. These include using different technology mediums, keeping up-to-date with ever increasing new technologies, exploring new ways of working, assessing vast amounts of information and screening it quickly to assess its relevance, interacting with new communication technologies and styles, or networking in a virtual world. How are we preparing our children with these skills?
The UNESCO definition of literacy is: “Literacy is the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate, compute and use printed and written materials associated with varying contexts.”
Does this definition go far enough to ensure our children are literate for the future? E-literacy starts with the basics of being able to read and write. Without this the information available is inaccessible. However are there other skills we should be teaching alongside the basics? And when does this become a standard part of the curriculum?
