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Pupil Progress TS2
• “The (new) national curriculum … helps engender an appreciation of human creativity and achievement… there is time and space in the school day and in each week, term and year to range beyond the NC specifications…” framework document 2013 p5
“The most elusive period of our lives occurs from birth to about the age of five. Mysterious and otherworldly, infancy and early childhood are surrounded later in life by a curious amnesia, broken by flashes of memory that come upon us unbidden, for the most part, with no coherent or reliable context. With their sensorial, almost cellular evocations, these memories seem to reside more in the body than the mind; yet they are central to our sense of who we are to ourselves.”
Michael Greenberg
Children have everyday theories of the world—everyday ideas about psychology, biology, and physics. These theories are like scientific theories but they are largely unconscious rather than conscious, and they are coded in children’s brains, instead of being written down on paper or presented at scientific conferences. The Philosophical Baby: What Children’s Minds Tell Us About Truth, Love, and the Meaning of Life
by Alison Gopnik
The young brainThe prefrontal lobe helps adults focus and block out distraction. It is undeveloped in young children, and doesn’t fully form in most people until they are in their twenties. Children don’t fully acquire the ability to concentrate internally until at least the age of five. What arouses them is what is in front of their eyes and ears.
The occipital cortex is highly active in infant brains. It gives attention to the visual world, and connects with the parietal cortex, which helps adjustment to new events.
MRI shows both these cortices light up in adults while they are watching a film and the prefrontal lobe goes dormant. This leads to the suspension of disbelief and passively reception of novel visual stimuli.
Is this what it is like to be a baby?
Very young brains are sensitive to statistical patterns.
The learning of language in its earliest stages involves the statistical prediction of which sounds are most likely to follow one another - an unconscious exercise in probability theory.
Changing the brain requires the correct neurotransmitters, and those are there when a person is curious, is predicting what will happen next and is emotionally engaged.
Jonathan Gottschall “The Storytelling Animal”
A unified theory of storytelling
Storytelling evolved to aid survival – it is hard wired
It helps us to navigate life’s complex problems
The more you are absorbed in a story the more it changes behaviour
Jonathan Gottschall “The Storytelling Animal”
We spend a great deal of time in fictional worlds - daydreams, novels, life narratives.
The dominant themes of story are ‘’horrorscapes’’ full of conflict and struggle.
Trouble, Gottschall argues, is the universal grammar of stories.
“Neverland is our evolutionary niche, our special habitat.”
Book Trust www.booktrust.org.uk
Fairy TalesGender Divide and Reading habits survey 2013
•30% of parents choose not to read fairy tales at all with their children. Reason,:• 51% of these parents said their child was too old, (Of those parents who said their child was too old for fairy tales, their children were mainly aged seven and older)•23% said their child was too young, •17% said their child simply didn’t like fairy tales.. (Of those parents who said their child didn’t like fairy tales, they were overwhelmingly more likely to be referring to a son than a daughter).
“Some parents and carers feel that fairy tales are not relevant any more, and forget that these magical stories can help their child solve problems, develop emotional resilience and make sense of the world around them. Fairy tales have been shared for generations and can inspire children to become readers and storytellers for life.” Justine Hodgkinson Head of Booktrust
Stories let brains simulate problem solving, decision making and learning the rules of the world.Karl Popper wrote “simulation of the future allows our hypotheses to die in our stead.”
•Types of cognitive reasoning: seriation – putting things in ordertime space continuum;prediction/hypothesisingseeking patternscause and effect
Bibliography• Adey, P., Robertson, A., Venville, G. Lets Think. (2001) A
programme for developing thinking for 5 & 6 year olds. nferNelson
• Book Trust,(2010) Learning about children’s books and poetry www.booktrust.org.uk accessed 3/8/2013
• Geake, J, G. (2009) The Brain at School. Open University Press
• Gopnik, A (2009) The Philosophical Baby.What Children’s Minds Tell Us About Truth Love and the Meaning of Life.
• Gopnik, A., Meltzoff, A., Kuhl, (2001) P. How Babies Think. Phonix.. Gottschell, J. (2012) The Story Telling Animal. How Stories Make Us Human. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Lucus, B.,Claxton, G., Spencer, E. (2013) Expansive Education. Teaching learners for the real world. McGraw Hill
