Week 11 Reading Blog

Week 11 Reading Blog

What?

This week I selected two readings that were based more on the primary school age group as I wanted to find out how children progress in their understanding from initial construction of knowledge to using their prior experiences to create meaning. The two readings I read were, for literacy, ‘Readers as Text Code Breakers’ (Harris et al, 2006) and for numeracy, ‘Early Number’ (Zeuenbergen et al, 2004).  

So what?

The main points as identified by Harris et al (2006) in ‘Readers as Text Code Breakers’ are:
- reading is integrated into our social and cultural understandings
- Strategies for making meaning, such as ‘decoding, predicting, confirming, self-correcting’ (p.87.)
- The importance of integrating comprehension, understanding and decoding of texts with a variety of examples of texts that can be related to real world, concrete understandings.

The main points as identified by Zeuenbergen et al (2004) in ‘Early Number’ are:  
- children need to develop comfort and familiarity with recognising, using and being aware of numbers from an early age
- children are often exposed to a variety of situations directly using numbers and number awareness during daily life
- Through the use of social understandings and play children begin to develop a deep awareness of number and progress in their skill level, (e.g. ‘sharing and division’ – (p.143).

Now what?

From reading these articles I am now more aware, as an educator, of how important the social aspect of learning is to literacy and numeracy development, for example communicating, cooperating to create shared understanding and forming connections between everyday life and learning concepts. To answer my initial question, children become more aware of their previous experiences as they are exposed to more learning and diverse environments. Therefore literacy and numeracy understandings begin to change as children engage in more diverse social situations, learn to have a wider range of communication strategies and begin to develop an awareness of their learning.

 

 

References:

 

 

 Harris, P., Turbill, J., Fitzsimmons, P. & McKenzie, B. (2006). Readers as text code breakers, Reading in the Primary School years (pp. 114-158). South Melbourne: Social Science Press.

Zeuenbergen, R., Dole, S. & Wright, R. (2004). Early number, Teaching mathematics in primary schools (pp. 121-148). Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin.