Early Learning Skills for Maximum Success: Ande Ford and Carolynne Masson
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hi and welcome to School Shorts with me, Melissa Chan-Green, journalist and mum of two with a passion for education. We have looked at learning challenges and struggles that students might face, especially when they are beginning school in other episodes. We're going to look a little more specifically this time at what are some of those root causes And what can we change as parents if we are more aware of that? And what impact does that have on their learning outcomes? So we are joined by Ondi Ford and Carolyn Masson from Ready for Learning. Kia ora. Thank you so much for being with us, ladies. Ondi and Carolyn. Kia ora. Co-founders of Ready for Learning. What does Ready for Learning mean? When are you ready for learning?
That's such a good question because learning, like development, happens on a continuum. And just because children start school at five, mostly, doesn't necessarily mean that they're developmentally ready for learning. our New Zealand curriculum. So it's quite a big question, isn't it, Ondi? What does it look like?
What foundational skills do children need before starting school?
Because also we know that kids are actually learning when mums are pregnant. They're learning, they're listening to sounds and things, so they're learning all the time. And it's not saying that they only start learning when they start school. It's not. They learn so much before that, so much.
Yeah.
It's more, I suppose, getting them ready for curriculum. And that's probably a little bit more that what we're looking for and looking at what are all those key foundation skills that support that and that they need in place prior to successfully accessing the curriculum.
Yeah, because so what you're doing and you're saying is, look, in New Zealand and in other countries around the world, we typically have children start school when they are five. How do you best prepare those children for being ready at five? And what are you seeing in terms of school readiness at the moment?
At the moment, in fact, we talk about maybe... a sort of two-decade change in what we've been noticing as educators ourselves and the skills and attributes that children are coming into school with and sometimes without. And there has been, over the past two decades, a definite decline in certain areas, such as your oral language and vocabulary, fine motor, gross motor.
Listening.
Listening as well, but also those social emotional competencies, you know, the self-help skills, you know, even wanting to come to school can be tricky for some children if they don't feel happy and safe coming to school. So the social emotional competencies are really huge as well.
It's interesting because on some of your other podcasts, I think someone's mentioned, might have been the last one, about since COVID. And there's a lot of talk out there about COVID babies. But it's so interesting to see that the research before that was showing this and it's been on a steady decline. Even our growing up in New Zealand research, massive chunk of research that was done before COVID showed that. Australian everywhere. When we started this about eight years ago, we started it because we'd noticed it then, before COVID.
Do you think that COVID made us pay more attention and go, oh, hang on, we're noticing these challenges and... We attributed it to COVID, but perhaps it was just actually that we started to go, we really need to have a look at what's happening here.
I actually wonder whether it's a little bit opposite. It's schools, we've been having structured literacy. We're a structured literacy provider for the ministry. So, you know, it's the silver bullet. It is amazing. It's fantastic. And yet we're still having schools saying, oh my gosh, but we've got this chunk of children that aren't making the progress. Oh my gosh, we've got our children that aren't ready for this. They can't even hear these things or hold a pencil. How can we get them to do these things? And so it's only now that they're going, whoa, hold on, that the curriculum's in, and they're saying, our kids aren't quite ready. It must be COVID.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:02–1:17
2
What foundational skills do children need before starting school?
1:17–10:14
3
How can parents prepare their children for school readiness?
10:14–13:36
4
What impact has COVID-19 had on children's learning abilities?
13:36–27:17
5
What role does emotional well-being play in learning?
27:17–33:32
6
How do movement and play influence early learning?
33:32–38:45
Speakers
4 identifiedMore from School Shorts
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