Picking up on some of the points mentioned.
Parents lacking reading skills is certainly a problem - and is sometimes the result of undiagnosed dyslexia, which adds to the complication, and due to cutbacks is likely to become more of a problem again. Ditto hearing and sight problems. It's sad to say the least that children are still growing up with inadequate literacy levels. I remember High School pupils coming to do work experience in playschool and some of them being unable to read to the children. In the intervening decades literacy initiatives should have improved that, but at work I still hear adults struggling to read out the interpretation on the displays, despite the text being deliberately very simple.
Lack of communication with infants /very young children - this I suspect will be an increasing problem given the combination of universal forward facing buggies and adults permanently occupied with their mobiles.
Brain wiring - this turned out to be one of my son's problems, and yes it takes a fair amount of effort by parents, and cooperation from the school to deal with, assuming it can be identified in the first place.
Approved reading schemes. The one size fits all, or the 'we do it this way at this school' is not helpful for those children who don't get on with the mandatory scheme. My daughter didn't have her brother's problems but couldn't get the hang of the scheme her infant school was using when she was there so her class teacher and I tried various approaches to see what would 'click'. She was being read to and had books at home, but the breakthrough was a while coming, not least because the head teacher was against any deviation from her favoured scheme, so a good year was lost and a fair amount of resentment and non-cooperation developed by said child. My granddaughter dislikes(and has in part progressed beyond) the scheme at her school and so plays up when she is required to use it.
Classifying books according to their readability/age correlation narrows a child's options and challenges if access to a wider range of material is not freely available and encouraged, and can unwittingly disguise reasons for apparent reading difficulties. A child may not want to read because the books are too hard but are supposedly suitable or because,conversely, they are too easy, or because the subject matter is of no interest. None of those reluctant readers is unable to read, the problem is unsuitable books.
John Burningham and the Ahlbergs are the kind of books my children read which I think are still good, but in certain circles attract criticism for their 'limited view of the real world', and supposed lack of relevance to modern children's lives and experiences.
Parents lacking reading skills is certainly a problem - and is sometimes the result of undiagnosed dyslexia, which adds to the complication, and due to cutbacks is likely to become more of a problem again. Ditto hearing and sight problems. It's sad to say the least that children are still growing up with inadequate literacy levels. I remember High School pupils coming to do work experience in playschool and some of them being unable to read to the children. In the intervening decades literacy initiatives should have improved that, but at work I still hear adults struggling to read out the interpretation on the displays, despite the text being deliberately very simple.
Lack of communication with infants /very young children - this I suspect will be an increasing problem given the combination of universal forward facing buggies and adults permanently occupied with their mobiles.
Brain wiring - this turned out to be one of my son's problems, and yes it takes a fair amount of effort by parents, and cooperation from the school to deal with, assuming it can be identified in the first place.
Approved reading schemes. The one size fits all, or the 'we do it this way at this school' is not helpful for those children who don't get on with the mandatory scheme. My daughter didn't have her brother's problems but couldn't get the hang of the scheme her infant school was using when she was there so her class teacher and I tried various approaches to see what would 'click'. She was being read to and had books at home, but the breakthrough was a while coming, not least because the head teacher was against any deviation from her favoured scheme, so a good year was lost and a fair amount of resentment and non-cooperation developed by said child. My granddaughter dislikes(and has in part progressed beyond) the scheme at her school and so plays up when she is required to use it.
Classifying books according to their readability/age correlation narrows a child's options and challenges if access to a wider range of material is not freely available and encouraged, and can unwittingly disguise reasons for apparent reading difficulties. A child may not want to read because the books are too hard but are supposedly suitable or because,conversely, they are too easy, or because the subject matter is of no interest. None of those reluctant readers is unable to read, the problem is unsuitable books.
John Burningham and the Ahlbergs are the kind of books my children read which I think are still good, but in certain circles attract criticism for their 'limited view of the real world', and supposed lack of relevance to modern children's lives and experiences.
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