Teachers at Hatfield Peverel Infant School have been using rap to help children learn.

Learning - headteacher Marrie Webster with pupils. Picture: NICK OBANK (46449-3)

Now headteacher Marrie Webster is set to fly out to Florida to present her findings at an international education conference.

The teachers at the school, in Church Road, worked on the basis that in the past, children's listening and speaking abilities were helped along at an early age by hearing nursery rhymes sung to them by adults.

They then reasoned that the increasing popularity of TV and radio meant that these modern-day factors were starting to replace the older oral traditions as educational influences, and started to use rap to help the children learn to read and write.

Staff asked pupils, teachers and parents for their memories of nursery rhymes and then compared the results.

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Published Tuesday, November 29, 2005

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