The National Literacy Trust recently published results following a survey of 18,000 school children. The survey was carried out in September with school-aged children from 111 schools across the UK. It suggested that a third (33.2%) did not have books of their own. That translates to 3.8m children UK-wide.
When I did home visits for my Nursery class in September I was fairly
shocked to find that only 3 out of 30 children had any books at home. I received mostly blank looks when I asked parents what their child's
favourite book was!
However I have since discovered that the
children aren't lagging behind in their early reading skills. They seem to be
picking up their initial word recognition from TV, computer/console games and the Internet.
Their IT skills are generally 2 years ahead of expectation and they are
using this channel very effectively to start reading. Maybe this is
more effective than books? It certainly seems to be just as, if not
more, engaging.
I was equally surprised to find that a few
children can write their names on a computer but can barely hold a
pencil! I think times are moving on, and that children will always have a
huge thirst for learning. With the current rate of technological
progress in the world, the vehicle for learning to read is unlikely to be the
same as the generation that came before....I wonder how many children received a Kindle e-book reader for Christmas this year!?
Wow - i find this quite sad in a way. Books are so lovely and would hate to think of them as 'dying out'. When i worked in a local nursery, a lot of children did not have televisions in their home and their language was so great. Bring books back i say! ;)
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