Education > Publications > Foundations Of Literacy
Foundations Of Literacy
This is an on-going project coordinated by SuePalmer and Ros Bayley, a specialist in Early Years education, and centring around their best-selling book Foundations of Literacy (Network Continuum Press), now in its third edition.*
Sue based her advice for the award-winning CBeebies series Razzledazzle on the principles underpinning FoL and the BBC used the FoL title for the teacher/parent notes on this series.
*Foundations of Literacy is published in Canada and the USA by Pembroke Publishersas Early Literacy Fundamentals
To devise Foundations of Literacy, Sue and Ros worked with speech and language therapists, educational psychologists, experts in child development, music specialists and early years practitioners in the UK and around Europe, notably Finland (a country famed for its high achievement in literacy). The key message of the project is that, before embarking on formal literacy learning, children need time to develop speaking, listening and attentional skills concepts of print and understanding of phonics the physical skills that underpin handwriting.
The book therefore sets out seven strands of practice (all consistent with good early years practice, and the Curriculum Guidance for the Foundation Stage in England) which should form the basis of literacy teaching for children between the ages of three and six.
Foundations of Literacy: seven strands of practice
Learning to listen: discrimination of foreground sounds against background noise; discrimination of a widening range of sounds; developing aural attention span; social listening skills, including making eye contact and attending to the speaker; mental imaging; development of auditory memory.
Time to talk: compensation for language delay, including expansion and ‘pole-bridging’ talk; social speech skills, including awareness of audience and turn-taking; vocabulary development; imitation of and innovation upon sentence structures; development of language to explain, explore, plan, predict, recall, report and analyse.
Music, movement and memory: development of rhythm, beginning with the ability to hold a steady beat; speech and listening skills as above, especially articulation and voice control, turn-taking, singing in time with others and development of auditory memory; physical coordination and motor control; left-right brain interaction.
Storytime: speech and listening skills as above, especially social skills and development of auditory memory; familiarity with written language patterns, story grammar and prediction skills.
Learning about print: awareness of the nature and functions of print; knowledge of the alphabet letters; concepts about reading and writing; emergent reading and writing; knowledge of essential sight words.
Tuning into sound: listening skills and general language awareness; awareness of rhyme, rhythm and alliteration (phonological awareness); phonemic awareness, including blending and segmenting; phonic knowledge, including the alphabet code.
Moving into writing: all the above skills and knowledge; refinement of motor control from large scale to fine control and hand-eye coordination; basic letter shape formation; development of the finger muscles; pencil grip and control.
Useful Links
A and C Black - Music Express and many excellent collections of action songs. (Go to the website and feed "Music" into the search engine)
Clever Clogs Educational Games - some lovely games, beautifully produced, especially for speaking and listening.
Early Vision - inspired use of video to encourage role play (can be purchased with elearning credits)
Featherstone Educational - Sally Featherstone's wonderful Little Books on all facets of early years practice, and many other excellent resources.
Foundation Stage Forum - really good website with chat room and advice for foundation practitioners.
High/Scope - Providers of excellent training courses in active learning for early years: the people who thought up 'Plan, do, review'.
I CAN - the speech and language charity, with much useful information for practitioners and parents on its website.
Lawrence Educational Publications - Ros Bayley's main publisher, home of the Beat Babies, Lola the Lion Cub and much much more!
Talk to your Baby - information and downloadable advice for parents on talking and singing to babies throughout early childhood.
TTS - suppliers of reasonably-priced, good quality teaching resources, including Sue's Role Play Print Packs