Literacy hour leaves 'no time for thinking'

Alison Mercer
Wednesday, May 15, 2002

The national literacy hour is not giving children opportunities to learn how to speak and think for themselves, according to an academic study. Researchers from Durham and Leicester Universities have found that teachers feel under pressure to keep up the pace of the literacy hour and are asking children questions which require only brief and unreflective answers, rather than taking an open-ended approach that allows the children to express their views at length. The study found that just one in ten of the spoken contributions children make during the literacy hour is longer than three words, with only five per cent longer than five.