One of my all time favourite books is "Of The Places You'll Go", by Dr Seuss. To my Grandson, I am known as Book Nanny. My children were read too in the womb and all three still hold a love for books across the genres.
In these more technology focused generations, I have come across more and more students, who do not know the classics. The traditional Disney stories, fairy tales, traditional tales and famous fables, even the Nursery Rhymes I sang and danced to with my children and my grandson, are being lost. I wonder why that is? I have also noticed that children are not happy to sit and listen to a story being read to them. Unless they can read long on a screen, or have a copy of the book in front of them, they get restless quickly and loose interest.
In my recent Dissertation, as part of completing my MEdL, I reported on the results of phase 1, of a Oral Language Project, I initiated at my previous school. This came out of the data, trends and observations on the writing achievement in the senior cohort, especially Maori boys. Through my research, reading and data gathering, it was soon very clear that the varying exposure to oral language, over the early years of these student's lives, made a huge impact on their success in literacy and in fact in any area of education.
Nathan Mikare Wallis has presented some very interesting facts about brain development during the first 1000 days of life. During this time, the quality of interaction between the child and the world around them is vitally important. The exposure to books, language, images, music etc at this young age leads to a more fluent and confident user of language, in all it's forms.
My "wonderings" as I become more familiar with my new school surroundings are:
Is this an area of concern at KCC? Is the decline in oral language ability/skill/knowledge the reason for dis-engagement in some of our students? If so, how do we begin to address it?
No comments:
Post a Comment