Portfolio #1 (Experience)

I was fortunate enough to have my placement, a day right after our first workshop. It was also my first time being in the nursery room (Ages 0 - 2) of my placement centre. To be completely honest, I never gave much thought as to what children at that age could do. And to be even more honest with you, I genuinely thought babies at that age only knew how to eat, cry and sleep. Brutal, I know. It was pretty amazing for me that just one workshop session changed the way I saw the children at my placement. I began to pick up on things that I would have casually passed as mere 'play' if I had observed it before the workshop. There are 2 experiences that occurred at placement that I'd like to share with you.

Learning Outcome 3.1  Offers a careful interpretation & analysis of children’s early literacy/numeracy skills & interests
First, I was playing with some trains with a little boy (whom I'll refer to as Little A) who was approximately 1.5 years old. At first we were just moving the trains about, then Little A handed me two train track pieces. These train tracks were formed in a way that you joined them exactly like puzzle pieces. I only showed Little A ONCE how I joined the pieces together and he got it straight away. In the next ten minutes, Little A was so focused on building a whole track that took up half the play mat. I watched in amazement at how Little A immediately understood the process of putting together pieces, and understanding how only specific puzzle shapes went together. I wish I had brought my camera that day just to show you what a beautiful track Little A had built!

To further expand this, I begin to try putting the pieces together according to colour. Little A watched me but continued to jumble up the colours when I passed the pieces back to him. I suppose my weakness here was either not trying hard enough to explain the process of classification or perhaps it was not challenging enough for him as he may have thought similar colours on a single track were boring. Who knows!

Learning Outcome 2.3 : Sources further information; developing &/or collecting resources for literary & numerical teaching & learning
I came home and began to research on how puzzles contributed to children's learning and came across this video (Attached at the bottom of the post). It's an hour long but the bit on puzzles is just from 36:45 to about 41:46. Through this video, I learnt that what had actually occurred at placement was a theory called 'Guided Participation'. In guided participation, the adult and the children participate in an activity TOGETHER with the adult guiding the process. In the video, this is also linked to Lev Vygotsky's theory of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). In the ZPD, children learn through 'Scaffolding' (Vygostky n.d.). Through scaffolding, the adult only sets up a frame and guideline that eventually leads to the child understanding the concept himself and being independent of the guidance to be able to complete the task on his/her own. 

Coming back to the observation above, I suppose Little A did learn through scaffolding. My demonstration of putting the puzzle piece together was the scaffold, and Little A did remarkable at learning quickly how to construct the train track independent of any help. I suppose children really do pick up on literacy and numeracy a whole lot faster than we think!

Here's the video, though you probably have to login first to gain access to the video!



REFERENCE:
Kanopy Streaming (2013). Child development stepping stones. Volume 6. [Web Video]. Subaico, Western Australia: Marcom Projects. Available from http://flinders.kanopystreaming.com.ezproxy.flinders.edu.au/node/54483