Reception Year Research Articles

Phonics and the Literacy Hour

Reception teachers in England and Wales have to find ways of simultaneously preparing their children for the Literacy Hour in Year 1, laying the foundations of reading and writing skills and following the National Literacy Strategy for the Reception year.

Inattention, hyperactivity and impulsiveness: their impact on academic achievement and progress.

Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) have been found to achieve lower grades at school than their peers. Does this extend to pupils who are apparently exceptionally inattentive, hyperactive or impulsive, but have not been diagnosed as having ADHD? This study determined the proportion of children who were assessed by their teachers as exceptionally inattentive, hyperactive or impulsive in the classroom. The relationships between these traits, achievement and progress were examined. The participants comprised 4148 children from a nationally representative sample of schools in England. Reading and mathematics achievement of the participants was assessed at the start and end of the reception year, and in year 2. Behaviour was assessed at the end of reception using a rating scale based on the diagnostic criteria for ADHD (American Psychiatric Association, 1994). The proportion of children with exceptional scores on the behaviour rating scale was reported. The reading and mathematics attainment and value-added of children with high scores on the behaviour rating scale were found to be educationally and statistically significantly lower than children with zero scores. The achievement of children with high scores on the behaviour rating scale replicated previous studies which investigated the achievement of children with ADHD. The behaviour rating scale could be a useful tool for raising the awareness of teachers to young children with severe behavioural problems of inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity who have not been diagnosed as having ADHD but may nevertheless be at risk of similar outcomes.

Mathematical Development

This area of learning includes children using numbers as labels and for counting, using practical activities for calculating, and using mathematical language to describe shape, space and measures. The objectives in the National numeracy strategy: Framework for teaching for the reception year are in line with these goals. The Early Learning Goals for Mathematical Development are that, by the end of the Foundation Stage, most children will be able to:

Lessons from the Nursery: Children as Writers in Early Years Education

This paper considers the rationale of the National Literacy Strategy (NLS) for changing approaches to the teaching of writing in the early years. Existing pedagogy and practice are summarised and mapped against the NLS requirements. It is suggested that there are tensions both in ideology and practice which are particularly striking for the Reception year. Research in early years classrooms in three primary schools in Southern England draws attention, in particular, to the ways in which the NLS is prompting changes in contexts for writing and in the nature of teacher intervention, with an increasingly early emphasis on the didactic teaching of writing conventions. The paper concludes that developmentally appropriate, affirming strategies need not contravene the educational ideals of the NLS, providing the professionalism of early years practitioners is genuinely nurtured and respected.

Communication, Language and Literacy

This area of learning includes speaking and listening in different situations and for different purposes, reading a range of simple texts and writing for a variety or purposes. The objectives set out in the National literacy strategy: Framework for teaching for the reception year are in line with these goals. The Early Learning Goals for Communication, Language and Literacy are that, by the end of the Foundation Stage, most children will be able to:

Illuminating Intersections: Ten Years of Feminist Criticism on Contemporary Austrian Women Writers

This review focuses on ten years of feminist reception of selected works written by Austrian women writers from the 1970s through the 1990s, with the exception of Elfriede Jelinek. Taken as a whole, the seondary literature can be categorized roughly under the following rubrics: mother-daughter relations; Austria's National-Socialist past; language and gender; the female other meets the "foreign" other; and intertextual allusions. I have singled out those contributions that provide a foundation for further research and/or suggest new directions.

Teacher intervention for Reception children predicted to experience literacy difficulties

ABSTRACT Teachers in the UK are under considerable pressure to provide effective support for children expected to experience difficulties with learning. The DFEE's special needs Code of Practice emphasizes the need for early identification and intervention; and new, national guidelines for baseline assessment of children at entry to school have been developed in part to encourage teachers to plan learning activities more closely tailored to the measured abilities and skills of individuals and groups of children. Against this background of policy‐making to prevent failure, this study focused on teachers' predictions of early literacy development and subsequent intervention in a sample of four primary schools drawn from two local education authorities in south‐western England. It was found that teachers were able to predict baseline and outcome literacy levels with some accuracy. The study examined support arrangements made during the Reception year for 30 children, including 13 for whom literacy difficulties were predicted and 17 for whom literacy success was predicted. On the measures used (entries in home/school reading diaries), low expectation children received significantly less support. It also emerged that teachers were not always in agreement about the appropriateness of early intervention, with a general lack of planned, systematic assistance for the cohort with literacy difficulties. There were wide individual teacher differences in the levels of support offered and in the value accorded to early intervention. Implications for schools are outlined from this relatively small‐scale study in moving towards more consistent and appropriate practice, while it is proposed that more attention should be paid to teachers' intuitive judgements about children's potential for literacy development.

Facundo and the Construction of Argentine Culture

Acknowledgments Introduction One. The Wars Of Persuasion: Conflict, Interpretation, and Power in the Early Years of Facundo's Reception Two. The Risks Of Fiction: Facundo and the Parameters of Historical Writing Three. The Wiles Of Disputation: Alberdi Reads Facundo Four. Facundo's Travels To The Metropolitan Centers Five. The Nation Consolidated: The 1880's and the Canonization of Facundo Six. A Classic Corrected: Rewriting the National Myths Notes Bibliography Index

The First Year at School: A Quantitative Investigation of the Attainment and Progress of Pupils*

ABSTRACT In England children must start school after their fifth birthday, but it is common for children to start when they are four in what is known as the Reception class. The Performance Indicators in Primary Schools (PIPS) project collected data on 1700 pupils’ early mathematics and pre/early reading levels at the start and end of their Reception year. The on‐entry assessment proved to be a good predictor of performance in reading and mathematics at the end of reception and the progress which each child made was estimated. This progress was found to vary considerably between schools and the variation was much greater than that typically found in school effectiveness studies. The data provided a unique opportunity to compare the progress of children who had, and had not, been to school. The Reception year was found to have had a major impact on the literacy and numeracy of children. Multi‐level models were employed for the analysis and from the models Effect Sizes were computed to assist in comparing the importance of variables in the study. This approach provides a mechanism for comparing the findings of school effectiveness studies with experimental studies and meta‐analyses. *This project has been supported by the National Association of Head Teachers as well as Bradford and Solihull Local Education Authorities.

The number knowledge of four to five year olds at school entry and at the end of their first year

SUMMARY The early development of young children's number skills has been extensively documented. Moreover throughout the primary school years children build upon these skills to develop more flexible strategies which make less demands on working memory and begin to learn number facts. This paper aims to explore the mix of number knowledge and strategies young children bring into school and the way these develop over the reception year. The wide range of knowledge possessed at school entry as well as the broad span of achievements at the end of children's first year are noted. The relationship of these skills to the conventional UK reception class curriculum is considered. A persistent trend to find low scores in children who entered school in January is noted. Overall, many children display considerable numerical competence at school entry, most display marked improvement over the year, whilst a small minority still have made very limited progress despite the considerable efforts of their teachers. Reasons for this are put forward.

An Investigation of Teachers’ Mathematical Subject Knowledge and the Processes of Instruction in Reception Classes

AbstractThis paper forms the last in a series of four papers which has described the way mathematical knowledge is presented and the way it is understood by teachers and children in reception classes. The aim here is to explore the co‐ordination and utilisation of teacher and pupil knowledge in the complex world of reception classrooms by following four such classrooms across the school year. An in‐depth analysis of a sample of five lessons from each of the four teachers concerned is provided as well as an account of their own reported experiences of learning mathematics, and their planning, teaching and assessing of mathematics in children's reception year, obtained from subsequent interview. Consideration of the mathematical knowledge, skills and competences of a sample of 10 children from each setting is also made. Both interviews and informal discussions which took place during the year suggested that teachers’ understanding of their pupils was an accumulated, contextualised knowledge derived from experience of children's particular responses to particular curriculum tasks in particular contexts rather than from formal assessment procedures. Teachers spent most of their time observing and assessing, coaching, guiding and correcting small group, mathematical tasks which encouraged active learning. This was made possible by the range of choice and flexibility available in other classroom activities in three of the four settings and by a generous staff‐pupil ratio in the fourth. The tasks presented allowed teachers to assess the extent to which children could answer questions about content and apply knowledge strategically. Knowledge construction appeared to be a dynamic process generated in response to particular learning experiences and to situational demands. Task demand, in fact, was changed in the process of tutoring and guiding and in the ‘scaffolding’ of children's responses. The range and depth of teachers’ own subject knowledge and the diversity in observed practice raises some important questions with respect to teachers’ pedagogical subject knowledge and, more specifically, to its influence of the content and processes of mathematical instruction.

The relationship between adjustment to school and success in reading by the end of the reception year

The aim of a study at the Institute of Education, University of London, was to investigate the reading development of children as they arrive in mainstream school in order to assess their progress from the emergent literacy phase into the early stages of beginning conventional reading. The main findings are that if children arrive at school with well developed ability to identify and label letters of the alphabet, and write their name, and possess sound understanding of the concepts about print, and they adjust positively to school, the new school entrants have an 80% chance of reading at least in line with their chronological age by the end of the reception year (Riley, 1995, in press). This paper focuses on the important finding that if children settle well into school they are four times as likely to be successful with early reading, and the paper also discusses the implications of this finding for reception class teachers.

An Investigation of Children's Knowledge of Mathematics at School Entry and the Knowledge their Teachers Hold about Teaching and Learning Mathematics, about Young Learners and Mathematical Subject Knowledge

AbstractThis paper describes an investigation of the mathematical competencies that 48 young children brought into school and their teachers' reported planning and implementation of the mathematics curriculum for the reception year. Competence was shown in counting, recognition of numerals, representation of quantity, simple addition, subtraction and social sharing, appropriate language of measurement, position in space and on a line, and selecting criteria to sort objects. The reception teachers claimed to plan integrated topic work and stressed the importance of play, flexibility and choice, with opportunities provided for practical activities in areas where children had already demonstrated competence. The content and sequence of the curriculum was derived from infant mathematics schemes which provided a rational analysis of subject knowledge. Little account was reported to be taken by class teachers of the nature and direction of young children's developing knowledge of mathematics gained in problem‐solving situations, and little evidence of its consideration could be found in the infant mathematics schemes they used.

Pre‐school Reading‐related Skills and Later Reading Achievement: further evidence

AbstractThis paper extends, to the end of junior school, associations between preschool reading skills and later reading attainment reported earlier. It also presents, from a second study, associations between letter naming and letter sounding at the end of reception, considered separately, and reading attainment one year later. The earlier findings on the correlations between letter identification and reading attainment at the end of infant school still hold at the end of junior school. The results from the second study give no support to the hypothesis that it is letter sounding rather than letter naming which predicts later reading attainment. Implications of the results for practice in the reception year are discussed briefly.

Changing perceptions of music with Reception children

This article is a summary of the influence on the author's practice of classroom observation of four- and five-year-old children working in music. It suggests that a strong emphasis on music in the Reception year is important both for musical and aesthetic development, and for the development of basic formal and social skills across the curriculum.

SIZE OF SCHOOL, SOCIO‐ECONOMIC HARDSHIP, SUSPENSION RATES AND PERSISTENT UNJUSTIFIED ABSENCE FROM SCHOOL

Summary. Information was obtained from 30 comprehensive schools and their feeding primary schools about all children who missed at least 50 per cent of possible attendances in the first half of the 1973 autumn term. Results showed no major differences in persistent absentee rates between the reception year at first schools and the final year at middle schools. In contrast, the figures for comprehensive schools showed a sharp rise, with a peak in the fifth year. Truancy accounted for only a small proportion of unjustified absence in all age groups. No association was found between the size of a comprehensive school and the number of persistent absentees. On the other hand, persistent absenteeism was closely associated with socio‐economic hardship in the school's catchment area though there is reason to suppose that variables within individual schools also influence the figures. The number of children suspended from a school was associated neither with a high incidence of socio‐economic hardship, nor with large schools, nor with high persistent absentee rates. In contrast, high suspension rates were associated with former selective schools. It is concluded that suspension rates may not reflect the amount or the degree of deviant behaviour in a school.