ABSTRACT
The National Literacy Strategy document outlines its objectives without touching on this in any depth and the practitioner may perhaps feel that it is a sterile document in terms of addressing the concept of learning through play. Speaking and listening feature largely in the Curriculum guidance for the foundation stage and so are acknowledged as the fundamental basis of the acquisition of literacy skills. While self-analysis and consideration of others’ opinions are featured as objectives at a later stage of the National Literacy Strategy, children in the early years need to be introduced to these concepts. Leaving children to play freely in the belief that they will eventually learn the targeted skill or concept through discovery, assumes that learning is a sort of process of osmosis by which knowledge is automatically absorbed.
