Portfolio #11 - 2.1

2.1 Provides a thorough account of these developmental influences, supported by key theorists, frameworks, literature &/or research

Over the past 10 weeks being enrolled in this topic, we have learnt a range of developmental influences that contribute to children's literacy and numeracy skills. Some examples of these include sensorial, memory, symbolic representation, communication and linguistic understandings. While I believe that all of these developmental influences are equally important in shaping children's literacy and numeracy development, I wanted to learn how I could fit them all into the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF). In this portfolio, I use a few developmental influences as sub-headings and try to fit the appropriate EYLF outcomes with them.

Sensory Play

Sensory play refers to the way children use all their senses during play to engage with experiences and explore and make sense of the world around them (Winderlich 2012, p.4). Sensory play is in line with Jean Piaget's (1973) stages of development whereby one of the first stages involves the sensory-motor stage. In this stage, babies learn how to manipulate objects, and how to move their bodies to reach for their interests. Sensory play is important as it helps children to be confident in exploration, and also helps strengthen neural pathways when senses are stimulated (Gainsley n.d.). Sensory play fits in with EYLF Outcome 1 which allows children to have a strong sense of identity by being able to take rish and approach new safe situations with confidence. It also links with Outcome 2 which involves children connecting and contributing to their world, as children use sensory play to explore new ideas and explore relationships between living and non-living objects. Furthermore, sensory play engages children with Outcome 3 for children to be confident and involved learners. Through sensory play, children can explore their environment and manipulate objects and experiment with cause and effect. Through sensory play, children also learn to explore ideas using their own imaginations creativity and play. Some examples of sensory play include play in the sandpit, playing with paint and slime, having a big sensory tub filled with different textures and water play.

Symbolic Representation

Symbolic representation refers to how children are able to recognise symbols and make meaning of those symbols. This may include alphabets, numbers or even everyday signboards and symbols. Piaget notes that children first think in pictures and symbols. Symbolic play can also include imagining made-up functions of a particular object in place of its actual function as a child's own way of making sense of the world. Symbolic play and representation is in line with both Piaget's theory that children construct an understanding of the world before experiences come along to confirm them later, as well as Vygotsky's theory that children's experiences form their understanding of the world. With symbolic play, children first may impose difference functions as a symbol of another object, until they are later corrected be in by a teacher or by their own experiences that some things do not function the way children have thought them to be. For example. a child may pretend a wooden block is a telephone as a symbol, but later with his own experience discovers that a block is a block and not a phone. Symbolic representation is in line with many of the learning outcomes in the EYLF. Once they learn symbols such as numbers and the alphabet, children can become effective communicators by being able to convey messages and demonstrate understandings of numbers and vocabulary. They can also recognise and engage with written texts as well as use symbols to represent and make meaning. 

Communicative-Linguistic Thinking

In terms of communicative-linguistic thinking, this refers to how children communicate effectively using their acquired linguistic skills and how they logically process their thoughts. This is demonstrated when children engage in social activities with their peers and families, or when they express themselves linguistically. Communicative-Linguistic thinking is in line with Vygotsky's (1978) theory where children learn from a more knowledgable person through co-operative dialogue, as well as through the zone of proximal development where children constantly build their knowledge based on a pre-layed out foundation. In terms of language, children mostly build and expand their vocabularies based on the words they already know. They learn by communicating with their peers and sharing knowledge, and participating in discussions with others. Communicative-Linguistic thinking is in line with Outcome 2 of the EYLF that allows children to feel connected and contribute to their world. Through communication, they participate with others to solve problems and explore connections with other people. Through communicative skills, confident children are able to follow their own interests, use reflective thinking, make connections and engage in learner relationships. All of these are evidence for Outcome 4 which states that children are confident and involved learners. And clearly, children who engage with their communicative-linguistic thinking are able to be effective communicators, using their language to send clear messages across, make connections, recognise patterns and relationships, experiment with ways of self-expression and engaging in verbal and non-verbal communications. 

References

DEEWR 2009, Belonging, Being & Becoming, The Early Yearns Learning Framework for Australia. 

Mcleod, S 2007, Les Vygotsky, in Simply Psychology, accessed 25th November 2013, from <http://www.simplypsychology.org/vygotsky.html>

Winderlich, K 2012, Sensory Play and Learning, in Everyday Learning Series 10 (4), Early Childhood Australia, pp. 1 - 24.

Gainsley, S n.d., Look, Listen, Touch, Feel, Taste: The Importance of Sensory Play, in Extensions: Curriculum Newsletter from Highscope 25 (5), Highscope, accessed 20th November 2013, from <http://www.highscope.org/file/NewsandInformation/Extensions/ExtVol25No5_low.pdf>

 

Portfolio #10- 4.2

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

I recently came a 'funny' article on ThoughtCatalog <http://thoughtcatalog.com/jay-gabler/2013/07/stupid-questions-youre-asked-at-every-age-1-40/> which isn't exactly child-appropriate but the first few questions definitely made me consider how lowly society views children. I am not implying that society despises children or thinks lesser of them, but I do believe that the 'norm' questions posed by older members of the community tend to belittle children and underestimate children's intelligence.

I strongly believe that as an educator, as an adult, our expectations of children can highly determine their potential and their confidence and ability in learning. I have heard not just once but many times that parents disregard reading to their children or investing in books for their children because either a) The books no longer interest children, b) They have no time to read with their children, c) Children can learn to read in schools. In doing so, parents are taking away their child's biggest rights to access educational resources and to learn. Parents themselves are taking away opportunities for new literacy and numeracy experiences to be formed at a young age.

Referring to a link provided in one of our tutorials as well, the Dymocks Online Bookstore <http://www.dymocks.com.au/Booklovers/childrensreading.aspx> had wrongly coded the link to view books for babies. Perhaps this is a sign of ignorance of the community, that they do not value the importance of babies learning to read. Entering a bookstore or library, one may also find that there are few 'baby books' and many are outdated. The low expectations of society clearly destroys the rich literacy and numeracy learning that should take place in the early years.

To enhance young children's literacy and numeracy experiences, parents and the entire community alike must be able to acknowledge the value of early childhood education as a strong foundation for future learning. Parents should take the initiative of reading to children, providing literacy and numeracy-rich environments even at home, participate in activities that promote literacy and numeracy with their children and also remember that it is not just the school's responsibilities to teach children, but learning should begin at home even before children start school. Members of the community must also be willing to provide opportunities for children to engage in a community that is literacy and numeracy rich. For example, the community can have a children's library, encourage children to count money at the markets, organise educational trips to the fire station and many more. If only parents and communities realised their strong responsibilities in exposing children to sufficient literacy and numeracy experiences.

Portfolio #9 - 1.1

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

In Week 11, I recall a discussion our class had surrounding bilingual children and how their social environments affected their language acquisition. Some of the questions posed were 'How do they not mix up the two languages?', 'How do their social environments influence their language development?', 'Do they know which language is appropriate to be used at different situations?'. As a child, I myself grew up in a trilingual environment. My grandparents spoke in chinese, my family and friends spoke in English and school lessons were taught in my home country's native language, Malay. Reflecting on this, it still intrigues me that young children can pick up so many languages at the same time. 

Many of our readings have indicated that children learn language from the language they hear around them (Bardige & Bardige 2008; Baleghizadeh & Dargahi 2010). This proves that the social environments play a big role in the child's language development. With time, children are able to recognise the environments that use specific language and hence will be able to determine which language is appropriate to use. For example, a child may speak his native language when he is around family or people in his community (say the child grew up in an area with a particular demographic), and switch the language when the child is around peers that may appear to be 'different' from the usual community. To expand the vocabulary of each different language, the child must be often spoken to and exposed to a wide range of different vocabularies at a young age. 

In line with social relationships, the time a child is exposed to a particular language social environment will also influence the more 'dominant' language. A research shown by Paola Uccelli (Fusaro 2010) showed that bilingual children who were placed in monolingual classes, excelled more in the classroom language. This may be because in schools, children interact with their peers and teachers using that 'dominant language' more than they communicate with the older members of their families who may not make as much conversation as peers. The more the child practices a certain language via communicating with friends or family, the sharper the child will be at that language. A child who consistently converses with a friend in one particular language will be able to pick up the right intonations, pronunciations, and slangs which will differ from the other language that the child uses to formally communicate with the child's family. If families want their native language to be the more dominant language, this can be done through story telling, passing down family traditions that involve that language, often engaging in conversations using the native language, and also helping the child to form connections between the native language and the other languages a child acquires. 

Ultimately, to me, while language can be developed through activities like reading and writing exercises, social relationships definitely do play the most important role in language development for a child. It is through social relationships that the child learns to express themselves through different languages and learns to effectively communicate what they really need. As educators, we also need to remember that the way we communicate and the relationships we form with children can determine how well the children learns and how confident and safe the child will be in our classroom environments. 

References

Baleghizadeh, S., & Dargahi, Z. (2010). The effect of nursery rhymes on EFL children's reading ability. New England Reading Association Journal, 46(1), 71-75,109. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/755497915?accountid=1091

Bardige, B. & Bardige, M. (2008). Talk to me, baby! Supporting language development in the first 3 years. Zero to Three, September, 4-10

Fusaro, M. (2010). Mapping the Literacy Development of Bilingual Children. Usable Knowledge. Harvard Graduate School of Education, 1st June. Retrieved from <http://www.gse.harvard.edu/news-impact/2010/01/mapping-the-literacy-development-of-bilingual-children/>

Portfolio #8 - 4.1

4.1 Critiques other plausible perspectives on early literacy & numeracy awareness & immersion

I was going through a list of apps on my iTunes for my iPhone the other day in preparation of taking care of my 3-year-old niece for a whole day. Personally, I'll admit that I tend to have a strong bias towards avoiding technology when it comes to introducing early learning, at least until the age of 5. However, my niece has had a constant exposure to technology and hence, I figured technology would only be my backup plan if all else fails. While going through the apps, I found an app that appeared to be a 'digital colouring book'. You can check it out here <https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/paint-sparkles-draw-my-first/id435539858?mt=8>. This really made me reconsider whether I wanted to use technology in teaching my niece as I instantly felt that using these apps would take away physical experiences such as holding a pencil or being able to draw on a paper without touching a screen or ensuring my niece understood that colours on paper aren't as 'bright' or vibrant as on screen. And hence, I decided to look at different perspectives on whether technology (mainly iPad/tablet applications) played a positive of negative role in children's learning.

Pros:

1. Can complement or supplement read-alouds (Dalton 2012)

2. Can supplement development of fine motor skills (Dalton 2012)

3. Provides stimulating and exciting visuals that engage children's attention.

4. Provides an opportunity for children to showcase their learning (Castek 2012)

5. Forms a foundation for future learning in a technology-rich world.

6. Allows information to be more accessible (Cambourne 2010 quotes Thompson 2010)

7. Offers more interactive options for children. (Cambourne 2010)

8. Work can be saved more easily.

9. Allows convenience of transporting multiple resources.

10. Educational games and applications may motivate children to learn. 

Cons: 

1. Discourages face-to-face interaction

2. Overstimulation can lead to low attention spans when away from technology.

3. Can take away physical experiences vital to children's development.

4. Can be an indicator of ignorance towards children of lower income groups who cannot access technology resources from home.

5.  Most technology/apps do not offer time for reflection (Wolpert 2009 cites Greenfield)

Reflection

Based on collective research and my own reflections of the pros and cons of technology and apps in learning, I suppose that at the end of the day, pros definitely do outweigh the cons. It was actually a lot harder to find articles and readings that had a negative view towards technology in classrooms. Perhaps it really just is a traditional and selfish bias to exclude technology from children's learning, especially in a growing society that incorporates technology into almost every aspect of life. While I believe that technology can take away the social aspect of learning, there are many articles that also indicate that social learning can also take place virtually. Many also indicate that using technology is a key in helping students express themselves by recording their own voices, making videos and rewatching these pre-recorded visuals. However, I do believe that there are many other different ways for children to express themselves such as drama, or painting or singing that do not involve technology. I suppose that, while technology should not be completely excluded from early learning, there just needs to be a balance in the amount of technology that should be incorporated in the classroom. 

References:

Cambourne, K 2010, Technology in the Classroom in The Sydney Morning Herald, January 19, accessed 21st November 2013, from <http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/back-to-school/technology-in-the-classroom-20100119-mhn3.html>

Castek, J 2012, Expressive Learning: Encouraging Students’ Multimodal Expression to Enhance Content Learning from Literacy Beat, accessed 21st November 2013, from <http://literacybeat.com/2012/05/24/expressive-learning-encouraging-students-multimodal-expression-to-enhance-content-learning/>

Dalton, B 2012, Digital technologies for literacy in early years classrooms from Literacy Beat, accessed 21st November 2013, from <http://literacybeat.com/2012/06/06/digital-technologies-in-early-years-classrooms/ >

Wolpert, S 2009,  Is technology producing a decline in critical thinking and analysis? in UCLA Newsroom, accessed 21st November 2013, from <http://www.newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/is-technology-producing-a-decline-79127.aspx>

Portfolio #7 - 3.1 & 3.2

3.1 Offers a careful interpretation & analysis of children’s early literacy/numeracy skills & interests

3.2 Shows competence in observing & planning for literacy & numeracy experiences & environs, adapting to specific learner needs, interests & contexts

I've recently come across this video of two siblings playing together and found the children demonstrating many literacy and numeracy skills.

Here are some of my running observations while watching this video:
1. The girl's babbling demonstrates a literacy skill. She is learning to communicate and use verbal language to express herself.
2.  The boy reaches for a block first with his left hand, and then uses both hands to reach for multiple blocks. This is a great opportunity for numeracy as he may be taught the concept of left and right, and quantity awareness as he understands he can grab more if he uses both hands.
3. The girl reaches for her brother's shirt. She shows interest in something on the shirt, possibly a pattern or a texture. She demonstrates spatial awareness by properly estimating how much she needs to reach over to grab hold of the shirt.
4. The boy attempts to use his words in asking his sister to let go of his shirt.
5. The boy whines and makes crying sounds without actually shedding any tears. This may be because he assumes that he gets his way with crying or commonly uses crying as a way to seek attention.
6. The girl shows a response to her brother's whining with a look of regret. She understands that her actions have caused a negative consequence.
7. The mother's voice here does show some intentional interfering in the children's own learning which I found to be slightly unnecessary but perhaps she was just trying to help both children make sense of the situation.
8. The girl constantly reaches over for the blocks in her brother's hands while making verbal sounds to indicate her want for the blocks.
9. The boy consistently reaches for new blocks to be added on to his tower. This shows great numeracy learning as he can learn the concept of shapes, colours, joining pieces that fit together, spatial awareness, counting the number of blocks, understanding portions (fractions) by understanding each block is a part of a whole, learning about height, height and weight correspondence and many more.
10. The girl succeeds in grabbing half of the block tower, but her brother snatches half of that back and adds it back to his own tower. This definitely allows him to learn about how a whole can be broken down into various parts and sizes, and how things can be added and subtracted.
11. The boy 'hits' his sister with the tower but this may merely be accidental and he may have just wanted to show the tower to his sister but estimated wrongly how much he had to reach over.
12. The girl does show signs of hurt but stops before she could actually start crying. She understands that crying is not the only way to express herself and is not necessary in every situation.
13. The girl lifts both her hands and taps them down repetitively. From this she could actually be taught about rhythm and beat, or action songs that involve hand raising.
14. She destroys the tower again but though the boy says 'No, no', he does it with a smile. He may have  let his sister ruin the tower on purpose so he could teach her that it is wrong by saying 'No' each time she destroys it.
15. The girl reaches over and takes the tall part of the tower apart twice, but with no hesitation from her brother. He already knows that his action of putting a tall tower in front of his sister will result in her taking it apart.
16. The girl puts the blocks to her mouth but is stopped by her brother screaming 'No'. He may have done this to protect his own toys or to actually prevent his sister from doing something he knows is wrong,

Planning for Further Learning

Using the above template taken from the Australian Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF), I decided to plan how I could further the boy's learning.

1. Analyse: Refer to the above running observations
2. Plan: The children can learn about counting, patterning, making different shapes and sizes, building, and can also learn about sharing, respecting, describing his work, making stories and even the role of community members (i.e. the architect, the builder, the engineer)
3. Act/Do: Encouraging the boy to explain his building, asking critical questions about his building, encouraging him to count the number of blocks used. Blocks of different sizes may be introduced or templates with specific patterns and colours may be provided for him to build. Writing his own story about the building and the people who work/live in it, encouraging the boy to think what else he could build with the blocks (i.e. cars, furniture), singing songs that are related to his building.
4. Reflection
From the running observations, I find that the video clearly showed many numeracy and literacy skills. In terms of literacy, both children are at two different stages of language acquisition. The boy is at the toddler stage where he is learning to string together words to make simple phrases, whereas the girl is at the babbling stage where they babble sounds of languages they have heard and unheard (Bardige 2008, p.4). They both clearly understand social cues, understanding that conversations take place between more than one person, and each should take turns in responding to each other, and with a direct purpose of who the message is indicated for. Bardige (2008) notes that to improve children's language and communication skills, it is important for the adults to constantly engage in conversations with the children, use proper language and encourageback-and-forth communication. The girl is also seen to be demonstrating self-corrective empathy whereby she shows empathy in response to her own actions (Quenn & Wien 2006, p. 4). This shows that the girl is definitely in tune with her own feelings and can understand the concept of action and consequence. In terms of numeracy, I believe that blocks are on of the best ways to introduce multiple numeracy concepts to children. As stated in the observations above, children can learn about shapes, colours, sizes, puzzles, joining pieces that fit, fractions, counting, weight, height, patterns and so many more all just from simple blocks. The boy definitely does show a key understanding in putting together pieces and always wanting to form a larger and higher tower.

References:
Bardige, B & Bardige, M 2008, 'Talk to me, baby! Supporting language development in the first 3 years' in Zero to Three, September, pp. 4 - 10.

Quenn, V & Wien, CA 2006, 'The Visible Empathy of Infants and Toddlers' in Beyond the Journal: Young Children on the Web, July, pp. 1-7. 

Week 12 readings

Literacy:
Wood, J 2005,  'Moses’s story: Critical literacy and social justice in an urban kindergarten' in Beyond the Journal: Young Children on the Web, July, accessed 6th November 2013 <http://www.naeyc.org/files/naeyc/file/vop/VoicesWood.pdf>

Numeracy:
Murphy, M 2009, 'Mathematics and social justice in grade 1: How children understand inequality and represent it' in Beyond the Journal: Young Children on the Web, May, accessed 6th November 2013 <http://www.naeyc.org/files/yc/file/200905/BTJMurphy.pdf>

Why?
In line with the analyst theme for Week 12, I wanted to understand how as an educator, I could provide a socially just environment in my classroom, pedagogy and learning. As an educator, I believe it is an educator's key role to respect the rights of children to learn and explore, as well as create an environment that makes children feel respected, confident and safe.

Summary
Both the literacy and numeracy reading by Wood (2005) and Murphy (2009) specifically focus on how as educators, they could introduce social justice into classrooms through literacy and numeracy programs. Wood (2005) focused on introducing social justice by encouraging critical literacy in classrooms. Critical literacy involved discussion about the stories, asking questions about the stories (perspective, intended audience, characters, social issues etc.), and incorporating the children's own personal experiences into conversations surrounding the stories being discussed (Wood 2005, pp. 4 - 5).  Murphy (2009, pp. 3 - 5 ) on the other hand encouraged children to express their mathematical knowledge and its relations to social justice using Cuisenaire rods. Woods (2005) explains that it is important as educators to understand that social justice from a child's perspective is not limited to the social issues that we, as adults face (i.e. race, social status, politics etc.) but instead are the everyday experiences that affect children's lives such as the teardown of a playground (Woods 2005, p. 7) or the kind of friends they want to make (Woods 2005, p.8) or the language used. Woods (2005, p. 3) also notes that we introduce critical literacy to children as a form of social justice to create children who are 'biliterate' so that that may communicate effectively in their home discourse as well as other community discourses (schools, playgroups, neighbours etc.). It is important to note that critical literacy and social justice allows children to form connections between their homes and their other social realms in the community (Woods 2005, p. 4). Children's prior home experiences well-determine their perception, understanding and practices in social justice (Murphy 2009, p.5 & Woods 2005, p.3) Murphy (2009) encourages educators to allow children to fully express themselves. Murphy's (2009, pp. 1 - 5) project involved reading a book, The Rabbits by John Marsden and illustrated by Shaun Tan, and encouraging children to use Cuisenaire rods to illustrate the power relationships in the book. From this project, it could be seen that the children each expressed differently how they felt about the power inequality. They each demonstrated different understandings and illustrations of the power inequality shown in the book. Murphy (2009, p. 6) quotes 6 notes that educators should keep in mind when creating a socially just numeracy environment:

" - Challenge children to be complex in their use of manipulatives
- Ensure that conversations with the teacher or other children occur alongside manipulative use
- Establish ways of capturing manipulative representations by more abstract means sometimes
- Trust children to be clever
- Make conversation an integral part of your mathematics program
- Allow children to surprise you".

Implications

Both these readings have definitely taught me about the importance of analysing environments and lessons from the children's perspectives. Both readings stress on the importance of providing opportunities for critical conversations to take place, and opportunities for children to express their thoughts and make sense and meaning of these thoughts for themselves. In my own future classroom, I hope to be able to introduce a wide range of diverse resources that stimulate children to question how it affects their own lives. For example, a social issue could be presented each week and we can take turns discussing how we were to feel if placed in those different situations. I hope to be able to have meaningful conversations with children when reading stories, and I hope to be able to prompt children to challenge and question the dominant curriculum. I would definitely like to incorporate as much home experiences as possible into the classroom, to allow children to make connections between the different social contexts they are involved in each day. My biggest fear really is to provide an environment that only supports a specific dominant perspective, or not doing enough to allow children to develop critical thinking skills, especially when it involves social issues. Fingers crossed, that as an educator, I too will be observant to the social justice issues that affect children's lives and be sensitive to those issues, to be able to truly impart social justice to children.