Week 8 Reading Blog

 

 

 What?

 

 

The two readings I selected for week eight were, ‘Maternal literacy practices and toddlers emergent literacy skills’ by Edwards (2012) and ‘Toddlers as mathematicians?’  by Lee (2012). After viewing a video in the tutorial this week on infants learning through interactions as text participants, I was interested in finding out more about how toddlers create meaning from being participants in their social, emotional and physical worlds and consequently how they express their learning through their thought processes and verbal and non verbal communication. Furthermore, this research directed my thinking to the broader question of, how can our interactions with toddlers (as well as infants and preschool children...) enhance literacy and numeracy learning?

So What?

 

The first article, by Edwards (2012), ‘Maternal literacy practices and toddlers emergent literacy skills’ outlines how interactions, with very young children under the age of three, can aid literacy development, with a focus on parental interactions rather than those in an educational setting. The points presented in this article, in relation to literacy learning, highlighted the importance of parents modelling literacy behaviours in the form of enjoyment, engaging with texts during everyday routines, exposure to a variety of texts, encouraging verbal and non-verbal expression and the joint construction of meaning through shared intentionality.  

The second article, by Lee (2012), ‘Toddlers as mathematicians?’, explored the development of numeracy from the perspective of an educator, and how very young children create mathematical meaning through the exploration of their immediate environments. The main points this article presents are that, spontaneous, child-led experiences create the most beneficial situations for numeracy development. Furthermore children are therefore able to represent their knowledge and form understandings in concrete ways through the navigation of physical spaces, incorporating mathematical ideas such as spatial awareness, length, height, patterning and shape; the use of numerical awareness through counting, organising and classifying; the manipulation of play objects to reflect aspects of volume, size and weight involved in measuring and quantifying.

Now What?

As educators we must be aware of the importance of the initial stages of experience and making meaning that provide the foundation of future learning. Therefore social interaction and environmental exploration that toddlers encounter provide the foundations for learning in the form of behavioural processes such as understanding, observing, imitating, communicating and remembering. Educators can enhance literacy and numeracy learning for toddlers (and older children) by:

- scaffolding play experiences
- guiding learning rather than directing
- modelling thought processes and emotional regulation
- exposing toddlers to a variety of exploratory, play-based experiences
- exposing toddlers to multimodal forms of text and written language
- integrating numeracy concepts into daily routines (for example, patterns, rhymes, shape, organising, classifying and counting)

 

References

 

Edwards, C. M. (2012). Maternal literacy practices and toddlers emergent literacy skills. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 0(0), 1-27.

 

 

Lee, S. (2012). Toddlers as mathematicians? Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 37(1), 30-37.