[Sundae]

When I was a bairn we only had play-school. Which was all play and no school and only twice a week.

And we were not allowed to start regular school until our 5th birthday. Bearing in mind mine is in July, I effectively missed out on a whole year of school. Didn't hurt me though - I always wanted to do everything Laura did, and could read and write and do numeracy up to and including tens and units by the time I started.

In England, children who will be five in the school year starting in September start school then. Those whose birthdays fall after Christmas attend half-days until the New Year. We have all our Reception intake for 2012/13 at school all day now.

Much of the education is "child-led learning". They have the freedom to choose what they will do, but there is an educational element in all the activities. Tiger always just wanted to go outside and run around. It was up to me to encourage interaction, imaginative play and discourse. I think I have helped him some in socialising and feeling safe in his environment. Also in listening and accepting compromise.

But the bigest single change has been the switch in the way the school teaches phonics. Which I knew wasn't working for many children 2 years ago. But the evidence was against me. And after all I am an LSA, not a qualified teacher.

Since the switch, his reading ability (middle of the class I'd say) has just improved so much. He's at the right level comprehension-wise, but his sounding out and blending of sounds is so much better. He even attempted to sound out the names of two Chinese illustrators the other day. He came as close as I would to getting them right.

I co-teach the advanced phonics group. We're less about sounds and more about tenses, suffixes, mnemonics etc. Blimey, it's hard keeping up. I don't have perfect grammar myself, although my spelling (bar typos) is better than average. Better than the average at school anyway - teachers and TAs check their spellings with me (yeah I'm boasting - I don't have much to be proud of!). But learning the rules? OMG. I absorbed them via voracious reading. So the exceptions never bothered me. Now I am coming across them all the time and having to figure out whether they are real exceptions ("No not in this case. Just because.") or known variations ("Well that one is because..")

Bloody mongrel language.