100 Ideas for Teaching Literacy

Abstract

If we want to think about literacy, we had better start by thinking about thinking: our own and the children’s. Hardy’s baby was thinking.I don’t know of any government documents that have put thinking (or speaking or listening, either, for that matter) at the centre of the literacy, and I know why (see Reading, p. xvi below). But we, as teachers, Learning Support Assistants (LSAs) and probably parents, are better at understanding children than secretaries of state for education.We are closer to children. We often refl ect on their thinking. If we think of the children we are associatedwith, we remember them in their cots as they look and wonder and as they think. They think as they play with the wrapping paper round their presents at first, and then as they play with the presents they think as they watch branches wave, and later as they watch the waves burst into life and then die on the sand they think as they see their parents hug and kiss and talk and argue and (sometimes) split up they think as they visit zoos, and as they listen to new sounds they think as they watch a wagtail flying in fear from a human being they think as they hear the news of the deaths of grandparents or great-grandparents.