The question of when to start 'teaching' children is an interesting one. Neuroscience, learning research, psychology and many other research fields say that young children learn through play. We are committed to a play based environment for this very reason - plus we know it works!
The British system has quite high literacy standards and expectations for children turning 5 (our Reception year). I come from Australia where the same expectations are applied to children after they have turned 5. Many Scandinavian countries start formal literacy learning after the child turns 7. Interestingly on international testing, the countries where children started later tend to do better than those who started early. Wonder what that means?
The BIS staff are working diligently with our learners to achieve the UK expectations and given that many of our children are bi or tri-lingual, we are pretty pleased with how well they are going.
What we do know is that becoming literate (and learning in general) is similar to learning to walk, in that one cannot make a child walk before he or she is ready and learning to speak and read will happen when the brain's wiring is ready.
New research in this link, Preschool shouldn't be like School, points to the importance of open ended learning tasks in play based environments. Teacher directed learning may well do more harm than good.
Please read the article and let us know what you think in the comments section.
Karen Cornelius :)
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