Outcome 3.3

Portfolio Post

 

3.3 States the strengths & possible limits of your own ability to observe & offer literacy & numeracy experiences with children less than 4 years of age

 

An Ability
This portfolio post is in relation to a previous reading blog post on how teachers can best support literacy and numeracy learning across multiple contexts and encourage parental involvement. As one of the limits in ability that teachers face is offering and observing activities between contexts with very young children under 4 years of age.  It is during these ages that parental involvement and communication is vital, as educators cannot see what experiences the child has previously been exposed to at home, therefore relying on parents to extend learning and continue the connection between childcare and home environments.

In the previous blog on this topic I stated that ‘For me, this reading helped me recognise that learning is very context dependent, and that for successful learning and ‘decoding’ to occur a strong emphasis needs to be placed on connecting learning environments and our role as educators in providing parents with information, especially when they do not have the initial knowledge on how to best assist their child’s literacy and numeracy development.’ These ideas where further evident with some peer feedback I received in relation to educators being aware of the ways they can help parents understand and provide experiences that best suit their child’s learning needs.

Recently I overheard a parent say about his toddler, who was getting upset, ‘she gets frustrated because she has no words to tell us how she feels’. This made me consider how parents understand their child’s individual needs so well and that educators need to complement this process by providing parents with resources in information on how they can best support their child’s development. As young children (under four years) are also having their first experiences of the outside world, away from their families, they are also still developing their own persona and social identity. Therefore it becomes more important for teachers to utilise parents’ and caregivers’ knowledge of their child’s individual needs and personal learning experiences.

The integrated nature of literacy and numeracy during these age groups (under 4), highlights the need to offer a range of learning experiences, not only catered towards literacy and numeracy but both learning areas. One of my own limits in offering literacy and numeracy experiences for children under four is that during these age groups I don’t believe literacy and numeracy learning can be separated, yet it occurs in everything that the child experiences. For me, an ability that has been improved (in relation to integrating literacy and numeracy with individual learning needs) by providing accurate and useful feedback and assessment in observing very young children’s literacy and numeracy learning, has been using anecdotal records as it has allowed me to be mindful of the child’s personality and provide un-biased accounts of learning, from both the child’s perspective and my own perspective.

Evidence of a lesson plan that was based on an anecdotal record that I created to plan for learning and create an experience based on a child's specific interests can be viewed in my professional portfolio (in Figure 1) by clicking on the link below:

http://annarobertsprofessionalportfolio.weebly.com/32-plan-structure-and-sequence-learning-programs.html

The following is a newsletter I found in relation to summative assessment and is useful for showing educators how they can integrate observation and planning with individual learning needs and identities.

http://www.earlychildhoodaustralia.org.au/nqsplp/e-newsletters/newsletters-36-40/newsletter-40/