4 Things Worse Than Not Learning To Read In Kindergarten

The year Sam started kindergarten, he turned 6 in October. He was one of the oldest children in his class, and he didn’t know how to read. When he started first grade he was almost 7, and he still didn’t know how to read. Fortunately for Sam, he entered first grade in 1999. And his teachers, Mrs. Gantt and Mrs. Floyd, didn’t panic if a child didn’t learn to read in kindergarten. In fact, they expected that most children would learn to read in first grade. (They also supported and encouraged children who learned to read easily in kindergarten, like Sam’s brother Ben.)

If Sam had started first grade this year, however, he probably would have been labelled as “slow” or “behind.” Because the new standard is that children should learn to read in kindergarten. Even though most educators know that many children aren’t ready to learn to read until first grade. Even though countries like Finland educate kindergarteners by allowing them to play, not teaching them to academic skills. And even though the new standard causes teachers, parents and even children themselves to worry that something is “wrong” if children aren’t reading when they arrive in the first grade classroom.

But guess what? Sam wasn’t “slow” or “behind,” and neither are most of the other children who don’t read in kindergarten. Sam became a fair reader by the end of first grade, and a good reader by third grade. By the time he reached high school he was an honors student. And last weekend, he graduated from college - with a 3.93 grade point average.

So what happens when education standards require that children like Sam learn to read in kindergarten and that teachers like Mrs. Gantt and Mrs. Floyd had better make it happen? Many educators say the result is ineffective and counterproductive classroom practices. Which means that many children actually learn and retain less than they would in a developmentally-appropriate kindergarten classroom.

So here’s my advice. (You can take it with a grain of salt if you like, because I’m not a teacher. But I am Sam’s mom.) If your son or daughter doesn’t learn to read in kindergarten, relax. Because many, many things are worse than not learning to read in kindergarten. Here are four of them:

Boys Who Sit Still Have a Harder Time Learning to Read

Especially in the early years

Anybody who has watched little boys for even five seconds knows that they are exhausting. At school, they tear around the playground, bolt through corridors and ricochet off classroom walls. According to a new Finnish study, this is all helping them to be better at reading.

The study, released Nov. 30 in the Journal of Medicine and Sport, found that the more time kids in Grade 1 spent sitting and the less time they spent being physically active, the fewer gains they made in reading in the two following years. In first grade, a lot of sedentary time and no running around also had a negative impact on their ability to do math.

Among girls, sitting for a long time without moving much didn’t seem to have any effect on their ability to learn.

Researchers at the University of Eastern Finland analyzed studies that measured physical activity and sedentary time of 153 kids aged six to eight. The studies used a combined heart rate and movement sensor, and researchers gave kids standardized tests in math and reading. “We found that lower levels of moderate to vigorous physical activity, higher levels of sedentary time, and particularly their combination, were related to poorer reading skills in boys,” the study says.

While the test group was small and Scandinavian (the Finnish school system‘s freaky success is almost legendary), the study offers some evidence for what parents have been thinking for a long time: we may not be educating boys the right way.

Two children in every class start school with an unexplained language disorder

Language is a fundamental human accomplishment. It is the foundation for literacy, underpins academic and social success, and is important for developing and maintaining relationships with others.

So it is no surprise that children who struggle to acquire their native language are at a distinct disadvantage when they start school. Our research, recently published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, found that two five-year-old children in every Year 1 classroom of 30 had a currently unexplained language disorder. An additional 2.34% had a language disorder that occurred as part of another developmental condition, such as autism or Down syndrome.

Children with language disorders have problems with speaking and listening. They tend to have limited vocabularies, leave endings off words and use very simple grammar in their sentences. They have difficulties telling coherent stories and don’t understand complex instructions. This causes many problems in the classroom.

So for example, children with language disorders will struggle to understand questions such as “which of these items will float? Why do you think so?” Even if they understand and know the answer, they may not be able to use words to explain “the ball will float because it is filled with air and is lighter than the penny.” A child with language disorder may just point and guess, or articulate a couple of key words such as “the penny sinked”.

Our study involved more than 7,000 children and 190 schools in Surrey, south of London, in order to find out how many children in England start school with a language disorder – what is known as a prevalence estimate. This may sound straightforward to work out, but it isn’t. As language is multi-faceted, we measured vocabulary, grammar and narrative skills both when the children were speaking and listening. This is the combination of tests that has informed current diagnostic criteria for language disorder.

When do children show evidence of self-esteem? Earlier than you might think

 The belief in being good at certain concrete skills could be different from a more general sense of self-worth or what scientists call “positive self-esteem.” For example, at early ages, children can report “I’m good at running” or “I’m good with letters.” But preschoolers might not be able to answer questions about their overall sense of self-worth.

So, when do kids develop a sense of self-esteem and how can we measure it?

Our research has developed new ways to study what kids think about themselves. Parents, make a note: our results show that most kids develop a sense of self-esteem – feeling good or bad about oneself – as early as age five, before they even enter kindergarten.

Measuring self-esteem in young children

Measuring children’s self-esteem can be challenging because it seems to require a certain level of introspection and verbal abilities. We found a way of getting around this by measuring children’s deeper and more implicit sense of self-esteem, something that did not require answering verbal questions.

For example, in adults, self-esteem is often measured by asking people to rate their agreement with statements such as, “I feel that I am a person of worth, at least on an equal plane with others,” or “I take a positive attitude toward myself.”

But preschoolers have difficulty answering such verbal questions. Cognitive and verbal skills required for such answers do not develop before age eight.

Why Reading the Same Book Repeatedly Is Good for Kids

(Even If It Drives You Nuts)

Does your child have a favorite book they want to read over and over again? Or worse, wants you to read over and over again? I bet you’ve memorized every word. You loved its adorable illustrations and clever text when you first brought it home, but now you’ve grown to hate it. You might even wish it would disappear forever. I feel your pain. I know it can be maddening, but before you toss this particular book, you may want to reconsider. Despite its annoyances, repetitive reading — whether you’re reading to your child or they’re reading to you — offers a surprising number of benefits for new readers.

Vocabulary and Word Recognition

The more a child reads, the larger their vocabulary becomes. When a child reads or hears the same book multiple times, they become familiar and comfortable with a greater number of words. That text you’ve memorized? Chances are your child has too, and that’s a good thing.

Pattern and Rhythm

Hearing favorite stories read aloud helps children become aware of the pattern and rhythm of text. Language is more than just words — it’s how words sound and connect to each other. Parents can model the rhythms of reading for children who are just learning how language works.

Fluency

Fluency is the ability to read text “accurately, quickly, and with expression.” Repetitive reading allows a child to read without stumbling or stopping, and reading time becomes more pleasant for everyone. Once a child masters one book, it makes moving on to another more appealing.

Let’s Play! Savoring Life with Kids

By Rebecca Lemar

Here are five ideas to get down and engage in one of the best parts of life: to play! And kids are grand masters of play. It does not have to rambunctious, but some of the best moments are. The trick is to let go of time and spend a few moments with your kids really seeing them, touching them, goofing around with them. It will be the best part of your day!

Line tracing – Bodies are covered with lines and angles: Straight, curved, parallel & convergent. Look at your palms alone. Take a moment with your small child and say, I have something to show you. And touch and trace the lines on their palms slowly. Show them yours, let them trace yours. Do it eyes open, eyes closed. This is a lovely calming down activity.

Head to Toe – Right before bed, I tap my fingers gently on my daughter’s head then rub her head a little and say, I love you alllll the way up here to alllll the way down…and I run my fingers down her body, igniting sensation in her neck and shoulders and arms, down the sides of her stomach, down her thighs, calves, ankles to her itty bitty toes where I squeeze the toes…all the way down here. And once usually isn’t enough. She asks for more again and again.

The Joyful, Illiterate Kindergartners of Finland

Forget the Common Core, Finland’s youngsters are in charge of determining what happens in the classroom.

“The changes to kindergarten make me sick,” a veteran teacher in Arkansas recently admitted to me. “Think about what you did in first grade—that’s what my 5-year-old babies are expected to do.”

The difference between first grade and kindergarten may not seem like much, but what I remember about my first-grade experience in the mid-90s doesn’t match the kindergarten she described in her email: three and a half hours of daily literacy instruction, an hour and a half of daily math instruction, 20 minutes of daily “physical activity time” (officially banned from being called “recess”) and two 56-question standardized tests in literacy and math—on the fourth week of school.

That American friend—who teaches 20 students without an aide—has fought to integrate 30 minutes of “station time” into the literacy block, which includes “blocks, science, magnetic letters, play dough with letter stamps to practice words, books, and storytelling.” But the most controversial area of her classroom isn’t the blocks nor the stamps: Rather, it’s the “house station with dolls and toy food”—items her district tried to remove last year. The implication was clear: There’s no time for play in kindergarten anymore.

A working paper, “Is Kindergarten the New First Grade?,” confirms what many experts have suspected for years: The American kindergarten experience has become much more academic—and at the expense of play. The late psychologist, Bruno Bettelheim, even raised the concern in an article for The Atlantic in 1987.

Researchers at the University of Virginia, led by the education-policy researcher Daphna Bassok, analyzed survey responses from American kindergarten teachers between 1998 and 2010. “Almost every dimension that we examined,” noted Bassok, “had major shifts over this period towards a heightened focus on academics, and particularly a heightened focus on literacy, and within literacy, a focus on more advanced skills than what had been taught before.”

Children who understand emotions become more attentive over time

What is going on in the minds of young children when it seems they are daydreaming or appear to be scatterbrained?

A study that my coauthor, Susanne A Denham, and I conducted recently shows that inattentive children may sometimes be absorbed in trying to figure out the emotions of their parents, siblings, teachers and friends.

Young children are vitally interested in which emotions these important people in their small social world are feeling in respect to them and others, why they are doing so and whether their emotional displays are “real” or “fake.”

We found that children who have a better knowledge of emotions have no need to ponder these questions. They become free to pay attention to their social partners, to play and to academic learning, among many other things.

Why emotion knowledge matters

The research project, named “Elefant” – short for “Emotional Learning is fantastic” – surveyed 261 children from 33 kindergartens in Lower Saxony, a state in northern Germany, as well as their teachers and parents.

Two separate surveys over an interval of 14 months were conducted. The study tested children’s “emotion knowledge”: that is, their ability to identify facial expressions of emotions and typical situations that give rise to emotions, such as happiness when receiving a birthday gift.

Talking to your babies could help them do better at school

The rate at which children learn language varies substantially from child to child. Some children show rapid vocabulary growth before they go to school, while others learn so slowly that they can end up six months to a year behind their peers.

Surely this doesn’t really matter, does it? We all learn to speak well enough eventually, so we could be forgiven for thinking that “late talkers” will simply catch up in the end.

Some of these children will catch up, reaching a good level of language proficiency by the time that they start school. But others will begin school at a considerable disadvantage, entering the education system without the ability to communicate effectively. These children typically demonstrate slower language growth than their more advantaged counterparts. But most importantly, research has found that this gap widens with age.

Oral skills are a precursor to literacy, so it’s not exactly shocking that children at a linguistic disadvantage will have immediate problems with reading and writing in the classroom. What is probably less well known is that these problems can be long lasting – so much so that they negatively and profoundly affect future academic success.

It’s no surprise then, that this growing disparity between certain groups of children has prompted researchers to identify the factors that affect language development and has inspired interventions aimed at closing the achievement gap. My recent research has worked to outline some of these.

Too much too soon? What should we be teaching four-year-olds

The first day of school is a momentous event in the life of a child. For many it is a day filled with pride and excitement. For others it is more stressful; they may cling to their parents, unused to being parted for so long.

In England, these extremes of experience are particularly marked because of the very young age at which children start formal schooling. Children begin school in the year in which they turn five, meaning that many children start school shortly after their fourth birthdays. England is unusual in this regard; in 31 out of 37 European countries children do not start formal education until they are at least six.

The age at which children start school may not matter as much as what happens to them once they get to the classroom. Given our backgrounds in developmental psychology and speech-language therapy, we think the current targets set for children in their first year at school are not developmentally appropriate. Our research published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry demonstrates that the youngest children in the class find these targets particularly challenging.

England has a curriculum for Early Years Foundation Stage, which outlines developmental goals from birth to five years old. This includes three prime areas of learning such as personal, social and emotional development; physical development; communication and language; as well as specific areas of learning such as maths and literacy.

In 2012, the New Early Years Foundation Stage Profile was introduced, to document attainment at the end of the early years curriculum. The profile is completed by the teacher at the end of the first year in school, and children are assessed on the extent to which they meet or exceed expected progress on 12 key targets across these areas of learning. Those making expected progress are deemed to have achieved a “good level of development”. Here are a few of the key targets:

6 Ways to Combine Summer Fun and Learning

Learn 6 ways to combine summer fun and learning.

1. The lemonade stand

On a hot day, everybody loves lemonade — and lemonade stands! That old-time activity is actually a terrific opportunity for children to learn math and science skills (by measuring and mixing the lemonade) as well as social skills (when they interact with customers). Start by talking with your child about what she'll need: lemonade, a table and chairs, paper cups, decorations for the stand, a sign announcing the price, and a box to keep the money in. Where would be a good place to set up the stand? How much will she charge for each cup of lemonade? When it's time to make the lemonade, help her measure 4 tablespoons of lemon juice, 8 tablespoons of white grape juice, and 6 cups of water into a large plastic pitcher. Stir and chill. Outdoors, help her set up the stand and hang the sign. Demonstrate how to greet customers, pour, and serve the lemonade (if necessary, pour the lemonade into smaller pitchers to make it easier for your child to handle), and make change. When the big event is over, talk with her about what she'd like to do with the money she earned!

2. The alphabet garden

Any kind of gardening is a great way for kids to learn the science of how things grow. Planting a theme garden can make the learning experience even more fun. One favorite is an ABC garden. Together with your child, look through seed catalogs or garden centers to choose what you'll plant — one variety for each letter of the alphabet. When you create your garden, have your child make a tag for each plant or paint the plant name on a rock with enamel paint. To make the project as rewarding as possible for your child, you'll want to steer him toward plants that are hardy and grow quickly in your area. Some of the most reliable vegetables and flowers are bush beans, cherry tomatoes, herbs, marigolds, radishes, zinnias, and zucchini. If you live in an urban area and don't have room for a full garden, try doing an abbreviated version of this activity. Choose vegetables or flowers that start with letters that spell out your child's name or initials, and plant them in a window box.

3. Local tours

How do doughnuts get their holes? Where does the mail in the mailbox go? How do farmers milk so many cows? You and your child can discover the answers by going behind the scenes at a doughnut shop, post office, or dairy. Just ask your local proprietors. They may be willing to allow chaperoned children to pay a visit and see all that goes on in their busy workplace. You may think of other great places to see as well! Before the trip, talk with your child about where you're going and what questions he'd like to ask when you get there. Write them down and bring them with you for reference. Take lots of photos of your trip, and help him put them in his summer scrapbook.

Pediatrics Group to Recommend Reading Aloud to Children From Birth

In between dispensing advice on breast-feeding and immunizations, doctors will tell parents to read aloud to their infants from birth, under a new policy that the American Academy of Pediatrics will announce on Tuesday.

With the increased recognition that an important part of brain development occurs within the first three years of a child’s life, and that reading to children enhances vocabulary and other important communication skills, the group, which represents 62,000 pediatricians across the country, is asking its members to become powerful advocates for reading aloud, every time a baby visits the doctor.

“It should be there each time we touch bases with children,” said Dr. Pamela High, who wrote the new policy. It recommends that doctors tell parents they should be “reading together as a daily fun family activity” from infancy.

This is the first time the academy — which has issued recommendations on how long mothers should nurse their babies and advises parents to keep children away from screens until they are at least 2 — has officially weighed in on early literacy education.

While highly educated, ambitious parents who are already reading poetry and playing Mozart to their children in utero may not need this advice, research shows that many parents do not read to their children as often as researchers and educators think is crucial to the development of pre-literacy skills that help children succeed once they get to school.

Reading, as well as talking and singing, is viewed as important in increasing the number of words that children hear in the earliest years of their lives. Nearly two decades ago, an oft-cited study found that by age 3, the children of wealthier professionals have heard words millions more times than have those of less educated, low-income parents, giving the children who have heard more words a distinct advantage in school. New research shows that these gaps emerge as early as 18 months.

What should be taught by teachers, and what by parents?

Who taught you to tell the time, to tie your shoelaces or to write your name? I have memories of my parents and teachers taking a hand in helping me to learn these skills as a small child. But what about more challenging tasks - who taught you to analyse a poem or to solve equations?

Mr Williamson, my favourite teacher, taught the principles of algebra to our class and patiently went over the information until it started to make some sense to me. I also remember my parents encouraging me to practise what I was learning in class and to try different approaches when the first solution didn’t work. So, who was doing the teaching in this instance - Mr Williamson or my parents?

I would say both. Mr Williamson had the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to present complex information in ways that matched my capacity for learning. My parents, on the other hand, knew that I would benefit from learning to persist in the face of difficult problems.

What lessons are the primary responsibility of the home?

Parents are typically a child’s first teachers. Initially, their focus is on helping very young children to communicate and, with age, to become increasingly independent, encouraging physical accomplishments such as walking and catching a ball, holding a cup and using cutlery.

Parents are also instrumental in teaching a range of social skills, including taking turns, greeting others and remembering to say “please” and “thank you”.

Information related to personal hygiene and sex education is also based in the home. Parents are regarded as important role models in terms of the ensuing behaviour of their children.

How to give bright but disadvantaged kids a leg up

Able young people from disadvantaged backgrounds lose out at every stage in our education system. By the age of five, the poorest children are already 19 months behind their richest peers in how ready they are for school. A new report published by the Sutton Trust has revealed that this gap is cumulative: those who are shown to be bright in national tests aged 11 are barely half as likely as their more advantaged classmates to get the A Levels they need to go to a good university.

For this new report, called Subject to Background, my colleagues Kathy Sylva, Katalin Toth and I, drew on data from more than 3,000 young people – the majority in state schools – who have been tracked through school since the age of three for the longitudinal Effective Pre-School, Primary and Secondary Education project.

Out of this group only 33% of bright but disadvantaged students took one or more A Level exam in what the Russell Group of universities defines as “facilitating subjects” such as maths, English, the sciences, humanities or modern languages. This was compared with 58% of their more advantaged counterparts.

“Bright” students were defined as those children who had obtained Level 5 – the standard expected for 14-year-olds – or above on any of the three “core” subjects, English, maths or science, in national assessments at the end of primary school in Year 6, aged 11. The disadvantaged measure was based on whether a student was eligible for free school meals and their families’ social and economic status – which was linked to parents’ occupations and salary.

Better chances of success

But we did identify a number of factors that significantly increased the chances bright but disadvantaged pupils have of gaining good AS and A Level results. Students’ attainment at A Level is generally higher if they went to pre-school – especially if it was a high-quality pre-school. They also achieved better grades aged 18 if they had a good home learning environment in the early years followed up by academic enrichment activities at home, such as going on trips to museums and galleries, and reading for pleasure.

Teaching Tolerance in Kindergarten

By age 9, children have prejudices that are “highly resistant to change.” So if we want to fight racism and violence (particularly against black men), we need to teach diversity much earlier.

Children develop their sense of empathy between ages 4 and 8. It’s this ability to see and feel something from another’s perspective that helps us choose to treat others equally and to engage rather than to act from fear.

The best way to promote empathy is to provide children with quality, reciprocal relationships with people from diverse communities. But that can be difficult, as 84 percent of elementary school teachers are white. And in most major cities, the majority of public school children are not.

So, teachers need to get creative. Young children can only normalize what they experience regularly. If they only receive knowledge, insight and comfort from white people, this can have lasting effects on what they assume about people of color. It is this disconnect, as civil rights lawyer Constance Rice said, that can make police officers “kill and do things that don’t make sense to you and me.”

One effective way to help young children is to seek out diverse experts who can speak in schools about weather, food, construction, politics and electricity (all common preK- grade 3 topics).

Another way to influence young children’s racial attitudes early on are picture books. Given the particular fear toward black men, using literature to combat negative assumptions means going through classroom books and thinking carefully about how often and in what ways black boys and men are included in stories. Are there enough books with caring, compassionate and smart, black, male characters? Are books in classrooms about black history balanced with those about the everyday lives of black men so that racial diversity becomes normalized for young children?

Having only a handful will not be enough to normalize positive images of black men. But although these kinds of books are still difficult to find, it’s not impossible.

Poor Kids and the 'Word Gap'

The White House launches a new literacy initiative aimed at low-income children.

“Education,” Horace Mann declared in 1848, “is a great equalizer of the conditions of men, the balance wheel of the social machinery.” But increasingly, the condition of American children—and even their eventual role in society—is determined well before their first day of kindergarten. I’ve taught the children of wealthy, well-educated parents, and I’ve taught children raised in poverty, and in my own experience, these two populations arrive at the schoolhouse door with two very different skill sets and expectations.

According to a 2012 report by the Brookings Institution, less than half of poor children show up to school prepared with the early math and reading skills, emotional and behavioral control, and physical well-being needed to be ready to learn, and that disadvantage persists into adulthood. The report continues, “children with higher levels of school readiness at age five are generally more successful in grade school, less likely to drop out of high school, and earn more as adults, even after adjusting for differences in family background.”

Much of this disadvantage has been attributed to what researchers call the “word gap.” Higher-income parents spend nearly a half hour more per day engaged in direct, face-to-face, Goodnight Moon time with their children than low-income parents do, and by the time these children are 5 years old, the poor ones will have heard 30 million fewer words than their wealthy peers. Nearly all of my more affluent students read in their leisure time, but approximately two out of every 10 of my poor students tell me, “I don’t read” when I offer to help them pick out an independent reading book.

Because the word gap first appears during periods of critical neurological and cognitive development, its effects cannot be easily remedied by later interventions. Teachers, standards, technology, even those hallowed halls of ivy—none of this matters as much to a child’s educational and economic future than an informed and empowered parent.

Unfortunately, explained Ann O’Leary, Director of the Children & Families Program at Next Generation in a phone call, “there’s a lack of alignment among low-income parents regarding how much talking, singing, and reading to children really matters over a lifetime,” and research backs that up. One study found that low-income parents underestimate their power to influence their children’s cognitive development, sometimes by as much as 50 percent. Wealthy parents spend more time engaged in these activities because they have better access to information, and O’Leary argued that when parents understand the impact they have on their child’s cognitive development, they invest.

Phonics education technique shown to have positive impact on literacy

New study is a vindication of the technique which teaches children to read using phonetic sounds rather than letters.

Children taught to read using phonics techniques have achieved "very high" results, according to new research, which cited the example of a seven-year-old boy able to read and spell to the level of a 13-year-old.

The results of the study, by the educational psychologist Marlynne Grant, are a vindication of the widespread introduction of synthetic or blended phonics in schools in England since 2010. The method teaches children to read by identifying and pronouncing sounds rather than individual letters.
The publication of the research comes as 500,000 year one children in state primary schools in England take the phonics screening check this week, a brief test to measure progress.

Teachers and unions initially resisted the use of the check, which followed the coalition's introduction of compulsory synthetic phonics to teach literacy in state schools. But since then, more teachers have embraced the method, which is supported by research in the UK and abroad.

The new study followed a group of 30 children who were taught using phonics for the first time in reception, and tracked their progress for three years, to the end of year two in primary school.

Learning through play ideas: top 10 activities

From building a memorial garden for a selfish giant to deciding whether to release the big bad wolf, here are some exciting activities for engaging pupils with play.

What would you do if you captured the big bag wolf? Here are 10 ways to teach your students using play. Photograph: Jim Schulz/A

 The use of play for developing children's learning is a well established feature of most early years settings. Visit a nursery, reception or many year one classrooms and you will find ample opportunities for children to play.

Unfortunately, as children move through school the pressures on teaching the formal aspects of the curriculum take over and play is pushed to the margins. Resource, space and activities for learning through play decline until they almost disappear by the time children reach the end of key stage 2.

While the medium of play for learning isn't disappearing in every school, where it does, there are fewer opportunities for teachers to plan effective lessons, and fewer chances for students to study in diverse and meaningful ways.

The following list of activities are focused on using play as a medium for learning – particularly through drama and imaginative inquiry. Each lesson idea is focused on a particular aspect of learning and links to a planning unit on the Imaginative Inquiry website.

Birth of new brain cells might erase babies’ memories

New neurons may explain why adults can’t remember being infants.

 

Unlike the proverbial elephants, babies always forget.

Infants’ memories may be wiped clean by the genesis of new brain cells, a study in rodents suggests. The findings offer an explanation for why people can’t recall memories from early childhood, a century-old mystery.
The study’s authors “make a very interesting and compelling case,” says neuroscientist and psychiatrist Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute for Mental Health in Bethesda, Md. “It’s just truly fascinating,” he says. “Nobody has actually looked at this very carefully before.”

More than 100 years ago, Sigmund Freud speculated that humans’ tendency to forget their early years, dubbed infantile amnesia, might have a psychosexual origin. Scientists later thought memories might be rooted in language, because kids typically start making long-term memories around the time they start speaking, says study coauthor Sheena Josselyn of the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto.
 
“But the really weird thing is that most animals show infantile amnesia too,” she says. “So the development of language can’t be the whole explanation.”

Teachers may boycott tests for four-year-olds

National Union of Teachers conference backs moves to oppose baseline assessment saying it will put pressure on pupils.

 

 

Teachers have denounced plans to introduce a national assessment for four- and five-year-olds at the start of formal schooling claiming that it would damage pupils, force schools into competition and distort teaching at a crucial stage.

The National Union of Teachers annual conference resoundingly backed moves to oppose the baseline assessment that the Department for Education is proposing for children in England at the start of reception year.

The motion on early years and primary assessment argued that the tests were "devised to entrench a system of league tables that sets schools in competition with each other", while an amendment called for "the possibility of a mass campaign of principled non-compliance" in response.

Speakers argued that children in early years education – from the ages of three until seven – learn better through the use of informal play and would be harmed by the early imposition of formal teaching.

Stephane Bernard, a teacher from of Lambeth, told the conference that she was "shocked, outraged, horrified and angry" to hear about the plans for more testing.

"What our four- and five-year-olds need is not another barrage of tests but emphasis on the child's personal, social and emotional development, communication and language skills. They need nurturing and their physical skills developing. All these things are key," Bernard said.