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Hillingdon Basic Skills Unit

Bell Farm Family Learning

For 6 weeks in November and December 1999 Hillingdon Basic Skills Unit ran a Family Literacy Course in conjunction with Bell Farm Christian Centre in West Drayton.

The aim of the course was to show parents of pre-school children (1-5 year olds) how they could help their children to develop good pre-reading and pre-writing skills in order to give them a head start in literacy before starting school.

The emphasis throughout the course was very firmly on having fun. If the parents enjoyed the course it would motivate them to do literacy related activities with their children at home. Each weekly 2 hour session comprised approximately one hour of lecture and discussion with the parents while the children were cared for separately in a crèche, followed by one hours child centred activity with the parents and children together.

Throughout the course we looked at, evaluated and used many kinds of books, games, activities and crafts that can help develop pre-school children’s literacy skills. From the parents perspective, the most keenly anticipated session was the one where we used the laptop computers to evaluate 5 currently popular children’s computer games to see how much useful literacy (or numeracy) related content they had.

The packages evaluated were based on Teletubbies, Disney’s Mulan, 101 Dalmatians, Pingu and Bananas in Pyjamas. After 10 minutes orientation without the children, the parents and children played with the programs together. The parents subsequently completed a questionnaire devised by the tutor to evaluate how useful they considered each program to be in the development of literacy skills.

The feedback discussion at the end of the session threw up some interesting observations. The most expensive package was less popular or useful than the cheapest. Teletubbies, although the younger children enjoyed it, was considered the least useful. Overall the games held the children’s attention for a much shorter time than the parents had anticipated. We finished the session with a round up of useful children’s web sites on the Internet and a brief discussion about the link between TV programs such as Dynamo and Words and Pictures and the BBC Learning Zone web site, which offers materials and activities to support them.

Ruth Simons
Basic Skills Tutor

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