Literacy at Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1

b. Home language

Student teachers may find that some teachers are not well informed about children's family contexts.

Research projects in the eighties explored whether the issue of language deficit in the home was a significant factor in underachievement in school (Brice-Heath 1983, Tizard and Hughes 1984, Wells 1987). None of the research found evidence for this. Quite the contrary; children were found to engage in complex conversations in the home. Transcripts of talk between parents and children revealed a wealth of language in all homes. Indeed, more recent research into early childhood literacy reinforces this (Hall, Larson and Marsh, 2003); researchers working with children in their homes found that children in the digital age seem to share narratives and technology with their parents (Kenner, 2005).

The discourse and culture of the classroom will be very different to that of most children’s home and community experience; so much so, that many children may seem diffident, even silent. Student teachers can consider these differences and what children have to learn in order to be pupils.

Student teachers should be aware of and encouraged to visit multi-disciplinary children’s centres being set up in areas of social deprivation across the UK. A key priority for these centres is to improve children’s ability to learn: speech and language development is targeted through home visits, baby and toddler rhyme groups, storytelling workshops, books for babies, play and talk bags and links with libraries.

Exemplary practice