Viva Vygotsky!
By Galina Dolya and Sue Palmer LEV VYGOTSKY – A THINKER WHO CHANGED TEACHING He lived for only 38 years, but in his last decade (1924–1934), the Russian thinker Lev Vygotsky transformed the study of developmental psychology. His cultural-historical theory...
How the learning revolution started
Sue Palmer reports on a revolution in early years education. When a north London secondary head travelled to Russia in search of new ideas for his school he made a discovery that changed his career. Moscow, 1988. Perestroika. The work of Russian psychologist Lev...
High-quality, shared, story-telling activities
How do we help young children develop a love of story, ownership of story language, a profound understanding of story structure and a repertoire of rich language? All young children like to listen to fairy tales and other traditional stories, but do they really...
Playing games makes your child clever
This article was written by Helen Rumbelow and was originally published in The Times newspaper. Gabriella is a seven-year-old at a state primary school in Hertfordshire. But when her teacher asks her to put on a pair of giant gold heart-shaped glasses to read...