A thing about lists

(Thomas Edison’s list of  Things to Do).

Which just goes to show that if you make lists, you’re in good company. I think it was probably in the late 70’s that Myra Barrs (who was then the English Advisor for a London LEA) wrote an article in the NATE journal, English in Education. It was called ‘In praise of lists’. It was an oddly quirky article; even though it was based on action research,it sat well to the side of the usual articles about literature-based learning. It stood out, and it stuck in my mind. It still does.

Just to put it in a contemporary context, here’s where the making of lists stands in the pecking order of writing ‘skills’ which teachers are required to hammer into their children and then test them on.

Year 1–  (that’s 5 year olds, to you and me)
write to communicate meaning…