learning to read

[Patf]

There was a discussion on You and Yours (R4) today about what age children should start school, and learn to read. I believe England is considering lowering the starting age for formal education to 4.

One man quoted french education "experts" as saying "our children start school at 6 and can read by Xmas."

Is this true? Depends what he means by reading.

Perhaps some have started to learn at home, and some at Maternelle, but it's still a big claim.

[Hoddy]

The suggestion is that formal education should not begin until the child is six. That is later, not earlier, than they do presently.

Hoddy

[Patf]

Oh - sorry [:$]  I missed the beginning of the programme.

[Panda]

Hello

In my sons school he started learning to read in maternelle, to claim no formal learning starts until primaire in France is not the reality, he did get formal instruction at maternelle and could read before entering primaire.  The big difference for me is that in France you can take your child out of school (as required) up until primaire, in the UK if they are in school from 4 they can not be taken out without good reason and permission from the school, i.e. schooling is obiligatory at a younger age.

Panda

[Clarkkent]

Aren't children in maternelle given considerable practice in forming the various components of letter of the alphabet, so that when they do enter school, they will already have the rudiments of writing?

[dr orloff]

I agree with the experts' comments. Our boy started learning to read in CP and was reading by half-term. Our girl is making good progress in CP and will certainly be reading by Christmas. However, there is a lot of preparatory work that goes on before CP. I suspect that if they hadn't attended maternelle (although this would be unusual) then that would not be the case.

[Scooby]

I think many European countries don't start formal (compulsory) education until children are 6.  We had a Swedish student staying with us a week or so back and she told us that this was the case for all Scandinavian countries.  I think it's the UK that is out of sync (again!)

[Patf]

Some one on the programme mentioned that in Germany children don't start formal education until age 7.

 

[Gardengirl]

I visited a maternelle, and saw all the children practising loops etc in preparation for handwriting. This lesson involved writing rows and rows of the same loop, before moving on to many repeats of the next loop, when allowed.

I used to teach at primary schools in UK, and taught handwriting amongst other subjects. I had the children practising letters etc, but with much smaller numbers of repeats at a time, with variety added in. Most of the children ended up able to write fairly neatly, legibly and quickly.

I found the maternelle session stifling and rather boring; the children just did it, no problem, but they seemed so young to be producing what seemed like a production line of shapes.

With my own children, one would have found starting school at 4 wonderful; he had started reading and writing neatly just naturally before then. The other would have benefited from starting school at about 6.

 

 

[Frenchie]

At the end of maternelle my son could only write his name , ( never anything of what you mention , gardengirl, thank God!)  but in CP, he could read at half term, indeed, as most kids in his class.

I speak in praise of l'école maternelle . It is intended to socialize children, develop their creativity, open to the world and society, they learn sometimes one has  to wait to get something, they visit farms for example, they sometimes even go on a "trip", in my son's case, three days in a gite in the forest, where a guide helped them ientify trees, birds, he could even hold a snake in his hands...

It is the best part of school in France, the worst being collège ( 11/15 year olds) .

[Patf]

I wonder if french is an easier language to learn to read than english? Does it have fewer irregularities, broken rules?

I worked as a teacher's aide with a Downs Syndrome child in a jewish nursery for a few years, and the 3yr olds had 5 minutes per day individual  hebrew tuition. They could all read by 5. But hebrew is purely phonic.

 In the UK  there have been so many different schemes and theories as to how to improve literacy, all given up as a bad job. And spelling even more erratic. I think it's just a very difficult language to learn to read.

My own preferred method was early intro. to phonics followed by daily drill in word recognition.