The early development of literacy and numeracy skills

SUMMARY This paper presents data on the knowledge and beliefs about reading and number seen in a sample of children followed through their last year of nursery school. The data showed that children of this age have beliefs and goals concerning reading and number which are very different to those of adults but that their emergent literacy interacts with their emergent numeracy in important ways. The children had very dissimilar frameworks of belief for number and reading respectively and prior to school, changes occurred in their strategic use of numerals and of counting. It is argued that the preschool has an important role to play in making children aware of the adult meanings of reading and number without imposing these meanings in overly directed activity.