The skills a culture invented, running on hardware built for something else
How reading is learned and what the phonics argument is actually about, what children know about quantity before anyone teaches them, motor skill, feedback, and why repetition works.
How reading is learned, and why nothing about it is natural
Speech develops without instruction. Reading does not, because there has been no time for it to. What the brain does instead is one of the best documented stories in the field.
Reading · Literacy · LearningWhat the phonics debate is actually about
A long, bitter argument that is only partly about phonics. Separating the empirical question from the political one makes both easier to understand.
Reading · Phonics · PolicyNumber sense before arithmetic: what children know about quantity before anyone teaches them
Long before counting, children track quantity in two distinct ways. Understanding both explains why counting is harder than it looks and why arithmetic sits on top of it.
Number · Mathematics · DevelopmentMotor skill and its link to everything else
Moving well is treated as separate from thinking well. The developmental evidence suggests they are far more entangled than the timetable implies.
Movement · Development · EmbodimentThe difference between praise and feedback
They are used interchangeably and they do different things. One evaluates a person, the other supplies information, and only one of them is much use for learning.
Feedback · Motivation · LearningWhy repetition works, and why children ask for the same book forty times
Repetition is the least glamorous thing in learning and among the best evidenced. It is also something children demand, which is worth taking seriously.
Memory · Learning · RepetitionNo commercial links. This article contains no affiliate links, no sponsored mentions and no links to any commercial client. Nothing in it has been paid for, and no organisation has seen it before publication. Little Minds Magazine recommends no products to parents. Published by Northbank Media. Our two declared revenue lines, paid listings and a labelled newsletter sponsor, are described in full on the about page and cannot influence any evidence framing on this site.
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