Portfoli Week 7

A Resource:

Outcome:1.3

The aim of this resource is to assist the learners and future teachers  to understand the importance of developing early literacy and numeracy skills in young children. The learner can explore approaches to planning, that encourages literacy and numeracy skill development and can also  reflect on ways to implement these ideas into practice .While reading this resource I thought that it provided a very useful insight into how children’s literacy and numeracy skills can be enhanced through play and also how teachers and parents can support children literacy and numeracy skills.

The power of play is the most useful tool for literacy and numeracy learning:

The resource states that the play based approach  is very important for educators working with children aged from birth to five years and they need to recognize this age group’s unique stage of development. The way young children take in information, make sense of things, understand and learn is not the same as for children of older ages. Promoting opportunities for children to explore, be exposed to and participate in literacy and numeracy is an important part of the early childhood year and also gives very useful examples. It also mentions that understanding what literacy and numeracy is and what it looks like is an important first step for the early childhood educator. Literacy and numeracy is much more than the narrow view that many in the community have, of writing, reading and counting or recognizing numbers and reciting the alphabet. In fact, literacy and numeracy is far broader and richer than that definition and is in just about every aspect of life.

It also states that a play-based curriculum emphasizes that children in the early years take in information through open-ended play based experiences and with a hands on approach.It also states that the play-based curriculum reflects a hands-on approach to learning where children both indoors and outdoors are surrounded by opportunities for a play which promote literacy and numeracy and providing a range of play experiences can promote literacy and numeracy skills.It has also listed some skills which are present in literacy and numeracy.

Skills underpinning literacy and numeracy include:

· Reasoning

· Classifying

· Grouping

· Sorting

· Recognising

· Distinguishing

· Symbolising

· Representing

This resource also states that as teachers we should be aware that literacy and numeracy are part of everyday life. Walking along a street and noticing the traffic lights, the leaves on the ground, the shapes and colours of cars. Literacy and numeracy is meant to be a meaningful and relevant part of everyday life for young children and we as a teacher should build positive messages and attitudes about literacy and numeracy in the children. We want them to participate in rich play learning experiences that support and promote literacy and numeracy and all other aspects of their learning and development. It also states that the challenge for the early childhood educator is to provide a rich range of opportunities that do not use formal and structured literacy and numeracy. When I will become a professional teacher this resource will be very helpful for me because it describes in detail about how to develop children’s literacy and numeracy skills.

Resource:

Early Literacy and Numeracy

Self-Guided Learning Package

www.gowrievictoria.org.au/.../Early%20literacy%20and%20numerac

Week 7

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

For this weeks reading I have selected one literacy reading “Home Numeracy Experiences and Children's Math Performance in the Early School Years” by Jo-Anne et al(2009) and a numeracy reading called “The Role of Home Literacy Practices in Preschool Children's Language and Emergent Literacy Skills” by Joanne and Margaret (2005). The main reason behind my selection of these two readings was that I wanted to know how home experience develops children's  literacy and numeracy skills and  we have also discussed in our workshop about how parents can develop their children's literacy and numeracy experience which forms  a basis for later development in their learning.

Main Argument:

The reading  on literacy  by Jo Anne et al (2009) claims that the research they did found that, a home  environment was the strongest predictor of children's language and early literacy skills and contributed over and above the specific reading  practice measures in predicting children's early  language and literacy development  and this  reading also states that home literacy practices  such as shared book reading frequency, maternal book reading strategies, child's enjoyment of reading, and maternal sensitivity and also a global measure of the quality and responsiveness of the home environment during the preschool years predicted children's language and emergent literacy  skills between the ages of 3 and 5 years. The research was done on African American children of preschool age and the reading also states that children  who acquire successful initial reading skills tend to remain good readers, while children who experience difficulty in learning to read tend to continue to have problems in reading throughout the school years, a  huge research has shown that children's emergent literacy skills, knowledge, and attitudes that are necessary for the development of reading and writing are important for later reading success and that the experiences, attitudes, and materials pertaining to literacy that a child encounters and interacts with at home  create a child's home literacy environment.

Activities at home is related to children's acquisition of mathematics skills in school and suggests that such activities are valuable when they occur in a variety of contexts. The activities were grouped into those that involved direct instruction in numbers specific skills such as  printing numbers, identifying number names, counting objects and activities that have some quantitative component but are only indirectly related to number such as  board games, card games, being timed, talking about money, me

The other reading was on numeracy and was by Joanne and Margaret (2005) and suggested that experiences at home before schooling are important in understanding how numeracy develops. In this study, the mathematical skills of 146 children in Kindergarten, Grade 1and Grade 2 was connected with the frequency with which parents reported informal activities that have quantitative components such as board and card games, shopping, or cooking. This research supports the claims about the importance of home experiences in children's acquisition of mathematical skills and that participation in mathematics while cooking is useful in development of mathematical knowledge and learning.

Implication for Practice:

As a future teacher I was very curious about how children develop their early literacy and numeracy skills and how home environment effects the development of children's literacy and numeracy concepts, theses two reading provide a very useful insight into how home experiences can affect children's learning of these concepts.  I think that home environment forms the basis of children's learning as these experience form their first understanding of these concepts,  these two readings have given a useful insight into how children’s early home experience by their parents can be made meaningful in developing their emergent literacy and numeracy.

REFERENCES:

1: LEFEVRE, J., SKWARCHUK, S., SMITH-CHANT, B., FAST, L., KAMAWAR, D. and BISANZ, J., 2009. Home Numeracy Experiences and Children's Math Performance in the Early School Years. Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science, 41(2), pp. 55-66.

2: ROBERTS, J., JURGENS, J. and BURCHINAL, M., 2005. The Role of Home Literacy Practices in Preschool Children's Language and Emergent Literacy Skills. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 48(2), pp. 345-59.

Portfolio Outcome week 2 to 8

4.3 Shows recognition of your own potential prejudices & projections, noting ways you hope to overcome them

Before attending this subject about literacy and numeracy i had no idea that mathematical concepts existed everywhere and that our life is incomplete without them and i also considered maths to be a very boring subject which only involved logical reasoning and therefore i was feeling a bit nervous and anxious, because i had never thought that teaching mathematics could be creative and fun. It was all because my previous experience about mathematics was not good and  i had always thought maths  just consisted of rules and that it couldn't be creative and  interesting but after my experience in placement and in this class i came to a conclusion that teaching maths to young children  could be interesting and creative, but for that as a teacher we have to be confident about our mathematical abilities, and also we should be able to make mathematical  experience positive for our future students so that they could build on those positive experiences and feel confident and happy in their applications of the arithmatic concepts. I had a wonderful experience  while teaching at kindergarten and i learned that we could incidentally teach maths to the children as i counted number of blocks with the children and read stories about" Five little ducks" which i thought was a wonderful and creative way to teach to young children and which also made me feel good about myself that i am able to involve children in numeracy and children also seemed more engaged when we try to build their interest by teaching them creatively. After enrolling in this i am feeling competent in teaching maths to young children as i have learn that math exist every where around us by making maths real  by teaching it in the context of preschoolers' everyday lives and that Math doesn't exist only on paper or a whiteboard; preschoolers learn math best by doing hands-on projects and activities and being reminded how the math they're learning is part of their everyday live.
Another strategy that i can use is by teaching maths across the curriculum, rather than just as an isolated subject and by blending  maths concepts into language arts, music, art, and science projects.

Reading 2 to 8 September

This time around i had a little difficulty in selecting two literacy and numeracy articles relating to the question  "how does play enhances children's literacy and numeracy"  which i thought was a very important topic and  research also suggests that  play based learning enhances children's cognitive and language skills, which has also been supported by theorists such as Vygotsky, Reggio Emilia and Froebel who were all advocates of play based learning . Children learn mathematical concepts through play  as they have many mathematical experience in their home environment and also  with  parents and teachers support they can apply these concepts of small, large and shape, patterns in their daily life. Also through interaction and communication with family members,community and teacher children learn to use , understand different ways of communication and literacy and then apply them through their play, children develop understanding of the processes of reading, viewing through everyday experience and interactions .The two readings that i selected for this purpose are "Examining the Play-Literacy interface: A critical review and future directions" by Roskos and Christie (2001) and "Children's mathematical thinking" by  Aston(2007).

Main Arguement:

The first article deals with how play enhances children's literacy and the main argument of the article "Examining the Play-Literacy interface: A critical review and future directions" by Roskos and Christie (2001) was  that

a. They did a research to find out whether a play promotes childrens literacy development and  they did that by doing a critical analysis of the study on this subject and came to a conclusion  that 12 out of 20 studies were sound  and proved that a play promotes children's literacy.These studies provided a strong evidence that play serves literacy by

1: Providing settings that promote literacy skills, activities and strategies.

2: Serves a language experience that can build connection between oral and written modes of expression.

3: Provides oppertunities to learn and teach litercay.

The another reading on how play enhances children's numeracy was called" Children's mathematical thinking" by Ashton (2007) which explored how play supports children's mathematical learning and  stated  that mathematics should be integrated involving play, activities and projects and that early childhood educators should  build on children's knowledge by connecting mathematics concepts to daily experience. They article also stated that while engaged in free play children engage in wide range of mathematical concepts and ideas and that play can be regarded as a instructional tool by which informal mathematics understanding develops and provides foundation for complex mathematical thinking.

Implication for the practice:

I think these two article provide a  very useful insight into how a play can enhance and develop children's literacy and numeracy skills and also as a future teacher i see a lot of implication of learning happening through play.While on my placement i saw a lot of learning happening through play where children were engaged in literacy and numeracy skills for example  while involved in play during outdoor activities they would count the steps they would take and while during mat time they  would read a story and later on they would engage in literacy by using the  words used in the books to their play like relating the story " Five little ducks" to the their play.

 Reference List:

1: Ashton, E. (2007). Children’s mathematical thinking. New Brunswick Curriculum Framework for Early.

2: Roskos, K., & Christie, J. (2001). Examining the play–literacy interface: A critical review and future directions. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 1(1), 59-89.

Portfolio

An Experience

Outcomes: 3.3

Before doing this course i had no idea that numeracy is so much important and present everywhere around us and also after the the discussion in the workshop i reflected on these two concepts and thought about it and came to a conclusion that our daily life is incomplete without it and would make no sense whatsoever  and i also came to a realization about  how we unintentionally incorporate it in everything we do.I started to recount the number of things i did that involved numeracy.

1: I did some cooking and the food had to be ready in half an hour.

2: I have nephew and  we always count things around us like he tells me that we
are four people in the house or he asks me what time is it and tries to memorize the time.

3: I also did washing and had to set time for it.

4: I had to go to university and had to reach there at 9:00 so i had to  set the alarm.

5: I distributed candies amongst children by counting with them and they counted with me.

6: I  read stories with my nephew about different kinds of bugs and it had lot of literacy concepts.

7: my niece and i looked at the patterns on the ceiling and i asked her what shapes she can see and she said that she can see a circle, a square and a triangle.

8: I put up the youtube video for my nephew called " five little speckled frogs" and he knows the whole song.

9: My nephew who is 3 years old asked me about what is time and i told him that it is how we divide our day
and night into hours and minutes and seconds but he's too small to understand the complexities.

10: I put on an " abc" song for my nephew and he knows it all.

11: while putting food on the table i counted the numbers of people with my nephew.

12: I did a bit of fraction with my niece as we broke and  divided the one piece of chocolate amongst three children.


So the conclusion is that numeracy has its own language and it is very important for us and as a  an adult we should try to engage children by incidentally teaching children about literacy and numeracy concepts.

Literacy and Numeracy

Response to Readings

Numeracy Reading

Purpose:

In the workshop we had a discussion about how literacy and numeracy are interconnected so i was very curious and read this article.

Main Argument

The  article "Early Literacy and Early Numeracy: The Value of Including Early Literacy Skills in the Prediction of Numeracy Development" by Purpura et al (2011) suggests that their is a strong relationship between literacy and numeracy and that this special relation ship between two can help to discover how early mathematical skills develop and also helps to identify the barriers to successful acquisition of these skills.It also states that several theories propose a relation between phonological awareness and mathematics skills and that development of each aspect of early mathematics skills is likely to be affected by different early literacy skills, it is important to identify which numeracy skills have vocabulary components, print components, or both.The unique relations identified in this study provides an important foundational information for understanding the interactional development of early academic skills.

Implication For Practice:

The reading  suggests that children who are not good in literacy can have difficulty in numeracy too, i think this reading is very important and gives an insight into the  unique relationship between literacy and numeracy and as a teacher  this understanding can help us to teach more effectively and help us in building on their knowledge.This information can be used to guide educators in their selection of appropriate interventions for struggling children so as best to remedy  specific mathematics problems.

Literacy Reading

Purpose:

I chose this article because it suggests that routines are very important for learning as this reading focuses on strategies for motivating young children as they slowly develop and it also provides groundwork for reading, writing, viewing and speaking.

Main Argument:

The reading by LAWHON. and COBB (2002) called "Routines That Build Emergent Literacy Skills in Infants, Toddlers, and Preschoolers"states that a literacy routine consists of regular use of variety of techniques to enhance children's abilities to listen, to observe,to imitate in order to develop  their language,reading and writing skills.It also states  that routines helps children in building their emergent literacy skills and that a teacher, parents and care givers can work together to build the literacy skills of the children and this article also describes  about different strategies to build these skills, which include  reading, songs, graphic forms,using  different vocabulary words,conversation, art activities. A literacy routine is a regular use of various routines to engage children to listen, to observe and to imitate in order to develop their language.

Implication For Practice:

I liked this reading as it states that routine provides positive and stimulating environment for children to develop their language and literacy activities, which positively affect their learning and as a teacher i strongly believe that we can use routines to build on and develop children's learning and understanding and it also  lists  many routines which can be helpful to us while teaching young children.

References:

1: LAWHON, T. and COBB, J.B., 2002. Routines That Build Emergent Literacy Skills in Infants, Toddlers, and Preschoolers. Early Childhood Education Journal, 30(2), pp. 113-118.

 2: PURPURA, D.J., HUME, L.E., SIMS, D.M. and LONIGAN, C.J., 2011. Early Literacy and Early Numeracy: The Value of Including Early Literacy Skills in the Prediction of Numeracy Development. Journal of experimental child psychology, 110(4), pp. 647-658.