Discuss how important you think each of the following factors may be in helping children learn to read and write

There are reading schemes that help children read, most notably “Oxford Reading Tree”. These are a series of books that go up in levels of difficulty. For example level one is a simple picture book with no words in it. This is to get the child familiar with books and also to get them to use their imagination. I feel that this is a good approach because it gets the child to think about what could be said, and what is going on in the pictures to form their own sentences. Also at level one there are books which also have pictures but use very simple phrases such as “six in a bed”. I feel this is effective as it gets the child to familiarise itself with how books are set out, also it helps the child to connect what is happening in the picture to the words they have to read.

At level two simple sentences are used instead of phrases. At this stage the sentences use verbs, nouns and pronouns. An example of this is “Kipper wanted a party”. This is important as it shows the child what different words can do or mean, and also the words begin to tell the story instead of the pictures. At level three the same approach is used except the simple sentences are extended a bit, for example “she put them in the flowers”. This should gain the children a higher level of understanding of the use for different words. At level four the books focus on verbs ending with “ed”. This is important, as it will get the child out of the overgeneralization phase, where they add “ed” where it is not needed, for example “wented”.

The psychologist B.F. Skinner suggests a theory of “Behaviourist model”, where when the child reads correctly or writes words correctly, positive reinforcement from the parent can lead to the child wanting to gain more rewards whether through praise or treats. Also to get more out of the child negative reinforcement is given for mistakes, whether it is correcting the child or telling the child off. I feel this is important, as the child will have the ability to gain knowledge for itself from an early age. Although their have been arguments against this type of approach. It has been said that parents would not often give positive reinforcement even if their child were wrong, for example a parent would not take away a child’s meal if the child said it wrong. Also it has been shown that children do not respond to correction of speech.