Week 12

Week 12 Reading Blog

What?

This week I was interested in how I could develop a child’s sense of awareness of their thought processes by helping them to becoming active participants in their social and emotional learning. The two readings I chose were ‘The Classroom That Math Built: Encouraging Young Mathematicians to Pose Problems’ (Wallace, Abbott & Blary, 2007) and ‘Moses’s Story: Critical Literacy and Social Justice in an Urban Kindergarten’ (Wood, 2005). Both readings demonstrated sociocultural perspectives on involving children in their literacy and numeracy learning by utilising group work to enhance social interaction and developing cognitive reasoning abilities in children, such as reflection, symbolic awareness, independent thought and critical thinking through problem solving.

So what?

The main points as described in 'The Classroom That Math Built: Encouraging Young Mathematicians to Pose Problems’ by Wallace et al (2007) in relation to using concrete realistic experiences to encourage numeracy development by:

• providing for differing ability levels: by keeping the children at the centre of the learning, involving them and using their interests teachers can promote independent, critical learners. Wallace et al (2007) did so by taking a real life problem that was relevant to the children’s lives, (their classroom arrangement) and positioning them at the centre of the learning, making it their project more than it was hers.
• Using children’s interests: allowing time for children to develop an interest in the topic using their experiences and observed interests and therefore prompting self-regulation in learning as it is more about completing a challenge than doing a required or imposed task. Wallace et al (2007) did so by opening the activity with narrative and using open-ended questions to gain children’s attention.
•  Allowing for Joint Construction/Shared Understanding: allowing for children to work together to complete tasks and develop processes that support each other and enhance learning opportunities. Wallace et al (2007) did so by using group work as the basis for the mathematics project, this allowed paring to occur where children could guide each other utilising the differing strengths they had. As Wallace et al (2007) explains, during group time ‘children have the opportunities to recognise, verbalise, explore and evaluate...’ (p.43).
•  One of the particularly important quotes from Wallace at al (2007) was “Effective early childhood educators teach children how to think” (p.48). This idea further illustrates the need for children to become aware of their own thought processes to be able to become an active participant in their own learning and development.

Similarly in Wood’s (2005) article centres around the idea of ‘critical literacy’ which represents the importance of children evaluating and exploring ideas whilst developing critical or problem solving processes and being aware of how they can direct their thinking to solving concrete problems within their personal lives. An important point of this article in relation to early literacy development is young children being able to use their communication to understand the world by understanding their own cognitive processes and as a result apply literacy to their understandings by interacting in a range of situations, and using a range of modes of communicating (Wood, 2005).

Now what?

These articles demonstrate the need for teachers to be aware of their theoretical understanding behind the techniques they use in their teaching of literacy and numeracy with young children. In future I will continue the process of being a reflective learner by researching and being critical of my teaching practices and how they can help to develop broader thinking styles and multiple learning applications.

References:

 

 Wood, J. (2005). Moses’s story: Critical literacy and social justice in an urban kindergarten. Beyond the Journal: Young Children on the Web, July, Retrieved 22^nd July, 2011 from http://www.naeyc.org/files/naeyc/file/vop/VoicesWood.pdf

Wallace, A., Abbott, D. & McAlhaney Blary, R. (2007). The classroom that math built: Encouraging young mathematicians to pose problems. Young Children, September, 42-46.