Outcome 2.2

Portfolio Post

 

2.2 Recognises subtle differences & levels in literacy & numerical learning & development according to age, ability, culture & social circumstances

An experience:

During my last prac I was in a kindergarten that had a broad range of different cultural and social backgrounds, therefore I was able to observe the interplay between age, ability, culture and social circumstances all coming together. Not only were there a mix of cultures but also beliefs and religious backgrounds and varying range of ability with disabilities and social backgrounds. One little girl in particular was struggling to communicate and open up to people in the social situation, who will be referred to as *Naomi for the purposes of confidentiality. *Naomi was emotionally and physically reserved and resistant, however it was known that she was able to speak English and had come from a bilingual background, although she existed in a different cultural setting, coming from an Indian family who had not been in Australia very long.

*Naomi had been at the centre for almost a year and was four years old and about to begin her last term at kindy. Occasionally we would notice *Naomi coming out of her shell and showing a smile or saying an utterance of enjoyment when engaged in particular activities, often these activities would be playing with baby dolls in the home corner or playing hide and seek games around the block corner, the things she enjoyed and felt comfortable doing, possibly activities she had been already exposed to at home. One day, me and another staff member were given the opportunity to attend the multicultural resource centre where we wanted to find culturally specific toys and props to use with *Naomi, and the other children, to incorporate a more culturally diverse atmosphere within the centre.

We came back with many great multicultural resources that related to *Naomi’s Indian heritage, these included books that included her first language with English captions, as well as Indian costumes and dolls. *Naomi loved reading the stories and would frequently point to the pictures, smile and say things about the story in a much more coherent and socially engaged way. The costumes were hung up around the room and also prompted many children to have conversations about them, as well as playing Indian music, therefore many of the children began to build relationships with *Naomi as she began to communicate more, whereas before they had been hesitant and tended to interact with her less.

This experience has taught me how individual learning must be to really get children to engage with their situations, as learning is such a social process as well. For *Naomi’s situation it was about making her more comfortable within the environment, giving her things to relate to so she could open up to the social situation and feel a sense of belonging. Consequently l now understand the importance of literacy and numeracy from a social perspective as being vital for not only communication but also understanding, being able to decode and make connections within the environments that surround you. For *Naomi to achieve successful literacy and numeracy learning she first needed the support that recognised her individual learning needs in ways of ability, culture and social circumstances. This thought process highlighted to me how differences and levels of literacy and numeracy learning cannot be assessed without taking in to consideration a child’s cultural and social identity.

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Outcome 1.1

Week 11 Portfolio Post

• Outcome 1.1 Clearly describes how the concepts are connected to & supported by social relationships & contexts

An experience: describe something you saw or were a part of & what you learnt as a result

 

 

These observations are from a professional experience in a childcare centre where I have evaluated the social environment of the outdoor area to determine the literacy and numeracy learning processes that are occurring...

 I was able to observe three different types of play and learning in the outdoor environment, imaginative, social and developmental. The layout of the outdoor play area is attractive to children as there are lots of different coloured object and shapes. These include brightly coloured play equipment with tunnels and a slippery dip, an undercover veranda with many different toys to use, including dress ups for imaginative play and a sandpit with many different buckets and spades to choose from.

One example of literacy and mathematical learning I observed while sitting outside involved the children running around the outside area pretending to be crocodiles and clapping their hands together in front of them like a crocodile mouth. The other children would run away from the crocodiles and hide around the play equipment, under it and in the tunnels and behind the shade cloth of the veranda. The majority of the children seemed to like this game best, laughing and screaming in delight as they took on the role of the person being chased by the crocodile. The literacy and numeracy learning areas from this observation include:

Literacy:

- showing/reading emotion and expression
- imitation of symbols/words – being a ‘crocodile’
- social roles (group/individual)
- communicating – finding out information/body language
- understanding gestures – symbolic play
- negotiating socially acceptable behaviours in play

Numeracy:
- spatial awareness – navigating the outdoor space
- size of play equipment
- group dynamics – ‘crocodiles’ and ‘people’ and how many of each
- shape of the space/colour of the play equipment


One of the most appealing things outdoors is the sand pit. I have noticed that many of the children like going around the playground and just feeling different textures with their hands. They pick up handfuls of sand and let it drain through their fingers watching it fall intently. They also pick up little bits of sand and rub it between their fingers to feel the grains. The children also love it when buckets of water are brought out for them to use in the sand pit as they seem to particularly enjoy the feel of the wet sand, likening it to ‘mud’ and making mud pies. This kind of play would relate to sensory development such as touch. They also love using different objects in the sand pit such as buckets and sand castle models and filling them up to see how much sand will fit in them and what shape it will create when the sand is tipped out.

Literacy/Numeracy Learning Outcomes:

Literacy...
- textures, describing and feeling different properties of objects (bucket, water, sand)
- cause and effect – sand + water
- utilising prior knowledge – making comparisons between the sand and ‘mud’
- symbols – understanding that sand could represent mud
- fine motor skills
- hand-eye coordination

Numeracy...
- changes of objects (change of the sand) – awareness of change
- awareness of shapes (building sand castles with sand castle models)
- awareness of depth/capacity of the bucket – filling it with water and sand
- number concepts – how many buckets of water/how many sand castles

From these examples I have now learnt that the social and environmental aspects of learning are important for understanding as social relationships provide scaffolding, joint construction of meaning and allow the child to test and represent their understandings in concrete ways. Environmental aspects are important as the environment (natural and constructed) provides many underlying elements that promote spontaneous learning, for example larger spaces, many colours and shapes and different textures (sand, water, play equipment (metal)).

 

 

Outcome 4.2

Week 10 Portfolio Page

4.2 Describes how parents, peers & communities may see, feel & shape young children’s early literacy & numeracy experiences
 

A resource: select & present a resource you have found or developed, providing justification for its use when working on literacy or numeracy with very young children


 

As part of my professional learning, a resource I have found very useful in illustrations of practice and considering practical applications of the EYLF and NQS in early childhood settings is the National Quality Standard Professional Learning Program, the NQS PLP provided by Early Childhood Australia - http://www.earlychildhoodaustralia.org.au/nqsplp/.

 My reading blog focused on parental and family involvement in early literacy and numeracy learning and experiences, therefore the professional learning program is helpful for my personal learning as it provides me with contextualised examples of how young children’s literacy and numeracy experiences are integrated with their social environments.

As relating to week ten’s focus of ‘technician – how do I crack this code?’ I believe that I learn best through hearing and discussing other people’s experience and similarly children learn best through exploratory and social learning and shared experience. Therefore the following videos and article have helped me think about how families and parents, children, educators and centres can form partnerships to support learning, providing me with realistic examples to refer back to when unsure or in need of refreshing my memory when I do not have access to examples from professional experience (especially since I am about to complete my degree and enter the professional world and would like to tie my knowledge together and reflect on my learning). Apart from helping me conceptualise my ideas and experiences, this website also offers suggestions on how to reflect, providing reflective questions and how to observe and practice observing when viewing the videos.

 

 

 

1. https://www.facebook.com/notes/national-quality-standard-professional-learning-program-nqs-plp/families-as-first-teachers-their-way/557075214334462

 

These articles are great for allowing educators to share ideas, the article here for example talked about the importance of creating partnerships with families and recognising the importance of parents as being the primary ‘experts’ on their child’s learning needs and not as the educator taking that away from them, but respectfully and mutually sharing ideas and valuing the expertise and knowledge that families bring to our practice.

 

 

 

 

 

2. http://www.earlychildhoodaustralia.org.au/nqsplp/e-learning-videos/have-you-thought-about/

 

The ‘Have you thought about vignette series’ Provides examples of practice from actual settings and ways of constructing environments and presenting yourself as a professional. They also discuss issues in practice and ideas or current debates.

 

 

 

3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqmCaC-ADc4

 

 

This video was helpful for suggesting simple ways we can include parents in our centres more effectively and maintain strong communication, the example given was to create a blog or online posting where parents can keep updated about daily routines and activities in action and see it connected with curriculum frameworks.

 

4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYLrDiPH9sk

The reflective questions the NQS PLP (2013) suggested to use for this video were:

• ‘What was the thing that stood out in the vignette to you?’
• ‘What questions would you like to ask?’

 

- The example here of using the outdoor environment to provide literacy experiences and structuring the ‘community’ of the learning environment within the centre was designing a treasure hunt as a group and using maps or directions to locate items, using literacy skills such as:
               

• Identifying, locating and labelling symbols and features of the environment
• Using directional language
• Communicating ideas
• Interpreting written and spoken communication
• Interacting in a group situation
• Spatial awareness
• Hand eye coordination skills/eye tracking

 

 

5. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UivL7SB4cY4

This video illustrated the importance of maintaining communication with families and discussing and sharing progress, interests and daily achievements and actively celebrating success and showing the child that there are mutually trusting, supportive relationships so they can feel at home in the preschool environment, like it is an extension of their family in cultural background, beliefs and functioning.

 

 

Reference:

 National Quality Standard Professional Learning Program (NQS PLP). Retrieved October 20, 2013, from the Early Childhood Australia website, http://www.earlychildhoodaustralia.org.au/nqsplp/