EL USO DEL EFLUENTE COMO FUENTE DE SOSTENIBILIDAD DEL

Polish children are required by law to begin their primary education in September of the year of their birthday. However, a vast majority of children (95 - 99%)’ are enrolled at non-compulsory reception classes (named ‘zero grade’) a year earlier, where reading and numeracy are also taught. Thus, Polish children typically start learning to read in the second half of their sixth year of life. This is much later than in most English- speaking countries (where teaching of reading starts at the age of 4 or 5) yet similar to most countries o f continental Europe (where it starts at the age of 6 or 7).

The first three grades of compulsory primary school (when children are 7-10 years old on average) are called the period o f ‘initial education’. Learning is then focused on basic skills of literacy and numeracy. These are taught by one teacher, who looks after the class throughout the whole three-year period. Later on, learning diverges into specialised subject areas taught by several teachers; at this point reading and spelling gradually shift from being the main focus of learning into becoming a tool for acquiring knowledge.

Systematic, explicit phonics is typically used to teach reading and writing. Its backbone (in pre-school grade zero and grade one alike) is the gradual introduction of the extended alphabet (i.e. all individual letters and most digraphs), one grapheme at a time, starting with most transparent and most frequent ones. This does not, hoverer, imply exclusive focus on letter names or even sounds. A typical reading lesson may involve introducing the target letter, detailed discussion of its graphic structure, finding sounds in spoken words corresponding to the letter sound, reading isolated syllables and, finally, reading whole words containing the target letter combined with other previously introduced letters. Teaching makes extensive use of the alliterative principle, that is, linking new letters with the alliterations of highly familiar words (<d> as /d/ in /dom/ [house]; <k> as /k/ in /kot/ [cat], etc.). All these activities are supported by a chosen reading primer and a set o f complementary materials. Different primers suggest somewhat different variants of phonics, yet most combine the synthetic phonics (converting letters into sounds and then blending them) with the analytic one (‘unpacking’ letter-sound relations in previously learned words). Characteristically, several primers want to prevent children from pronouncing letter sounds in isolation and encourage syllable-level analysis and blending. Elements of global approach

(memorising non-analysed words) may also be used (to a limited extent) in the very beginning.

The zero grade curriculum requires the introduction of 22 basic Roman letters (without J, digraphs and letters with diacritics), and all the reading materials are composed of these letters only. The curriculum aims at making children independent in word decoding skills (within the basic 22 letter set) by the end of grade 0. In practice, however, the skills achieved vary widely from mere letter name knowledge to fairly fluent reading. Importantly, teaching of writing in grade zero is minimal: typically, it does not go beyond a drill in handwriting of isolated capital letters.

The first grade curriculum again introduces all the letters from the beginning using a different primer*. However, the instruction is faster, more extensive and better integrated: all letters and most digraphs are eventually introduced, and reading, writing and spelling are all taught together. Cursive script is used (and explicitly taught) from the start. Spontaneous, emergent spelling is usually not encouraged, and the importance of spelling accuracy is stressed from the outset^ Explicit teaching of spelling rules also plays an important part; some morphologically-based alteration rules (e.g. those that disambiguate the spelling o f homophonie graphemes u-6, r-rz) are already introduced in the first grade. Teaching and consolidation of spelling rules (accompanied by appropriate drill exercises) is an important part of the curriculum until the 5"" grade, if not longer.

The curriculum generally expects children to become independent readers by the end o f r* grade. Second grade reading activities should focus on fluency and comprehension, rather than basic decoding skills. However, a number o f children still struggle with decoding beyond grade one. The minimum requirement is, certainly, to read independently by the end of the third grade, since from then on a child must use her reading skills extensively as a tool for extracting information in a number of specialised subject areas.

Phonological awareness training features prominently, both as part of the kindergarten ‘reading readiness’ curriculum (where it occurs without any reference to

* This (arguably peculiar) repetition reflects the history o f pre-school education: zero-grade instruction was introduced relatively recently (in 1979) and never fully integrated with the following compulsory education. Also, as zero grade instruction is not compulsory, the first grade curriculum is set to provide for all children, also those who did not receive any instruction before.

^ A strict approach to spelling accuracy is maintained throughout the entire period o f schooling. Poor spelling can seriously compromise chances in all formal assessments involving Polish language and literature, up to and including matura (A-level) exam. There is some trend towards relaxation o f this approach recently.

letters) and later on in grades 0 and 1 (where it is integrated with letter knowledge and reading). Phoneme and syllable analysis and blending as well as alliteration recognition are employed most often. However, the very term ‘phonological awareness’ rarely occurs; concepts such as ‘phonematic hearing’ or ‘auditory analysis and synthesis’ are used instead, betraying the underlying assumption of phonological processes being a subset of general auditory-perceptual processing.

Formal teaching of grammar is also an important part of the primary school curriculum. During the period of initial education children typically learn to identify the basic parts o f speech (noun, verb, adjective, adverb, numeral), and some inflectional forms (number and gender of nouns; number, person and tense of verbs; number, gender and degree of adjectives), as well as to differentiate between indicative, interrogative, imperative and exclamatory sentences. Since most spelling rules are grammatically motivated, the teaching of grammar and orthography partially overlap.

The general features of the Polish reading and writing instruction may be, then, summed up as follows:

- use o f systematic and explicit synthetic-analytic phonics

- largely normative approach - using the same materials for the whole class, predominance of whole class activities and focus on accuracy from the start; - high expectations (at least for the majority of children) in terms of speed of

learning and level of mastery;

- focus on grammatical/orthographic rules and their application.

The picture just sketched is certainly a simplification insofar as it fails to acknowledge recent changes in early literacy teaching. A general trend from uniformity to variety of provision may be observed. This includes teaching aids (greater variety of primers, integrated multi-book reading schemes), classroom practices (a wider range of activities, apart from traditional primer-centred and teacher-centred ones) and teaching approaches (experiments with global or language experience methods). My description, however, reflects the mainstream approach.

CHAPTER 5

THE STUDY