Portfolio: A Resource

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

While I was searching for some information about how literacy develops in early childhood I came across this wonderful resource which describes in details how teachers and families can help children to develop their literacy skills.

According to Raban and Coates:

What is now evident is that the development of literacy is very much social and is being experienced and experimented with throughout children's daily lives. Indeed the concepts of literacy that young children bring to school will be defined by their experience and understanding of the functions of literacy in the world that surrounding.

Focusing on language and literacy development as a social practice is a particularly a very helpful conceptual framework to support teacher practice. This framework acknowledges the importance of social and cultural contexts to children’s learning, and recognises the significance of children’s diverse backgrounds and the richness of the language and literacy knowledge they bring to kindergarten. It moves beyond the perspective in which language and literacy development is treated as a series of technical skills that can be taught independently of the social context. As Hamer observes “Socio cultural theory challenges us to widen our perspective beyond that of the individual child and of knowledge and meaning in isolation. Instead, children are viewed as inseparable from their social contexts, and knowledge and meanings are seen as embedded within socio cultural practices”.

Figure 1 which is adapted from Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model of developmental processes) highlights the importance of moving forward from a technical view of language and literacy learning that focuses on a narrow set of skills and processes to a more holistic socio cultural perspective.

This conceptual framework highlights the importance of:

1: teachers’ critical reflection on their practices.

2: the inter-relationships of educational research into young children’s learning and    development, language development and early literacy learning, including their working definition of early literacy.

3: the  beliefs, principles and practices, including the teacher’s role, the image of the child and

 intentional teaching practices.

4:  rich conversations and interactions in the kindergarten learning environment.

5:  supportive partnerships with children, parents, families and communities.

6:  inclusive learning environments and children’s capacity to experiment and engage with

literacy through play.

7:  connections with children’s prior language and literacy experiences, family priorities for

supporting literacy, children’s interests and strengths and community and family

opportunities for language.

Current research about language and literacy learning and development, and ways of engaging children in learning, has found a strong evidence of the need for supportive adult interactions in rich, inviting learning contexts where language and literacy learning is related to real-life purposes. Children learn best when, with the support of a knowledgeable and trusted adult, they are actively involved and interested. For teachers, it is particularly useful to build strong relationships with their students. The importance of a supportive learning environment is highlighted by Hyson’s research, which identified a number of factors that undermined young children’s positive approach to learning. She found that things such as non supportive relationships between adults and children, not challenging and irrelevant learning experiences, and teaching methods that fails to support children’ s  engagement and motivation to learn were associated with children becoming disengaged learners.

It is, therefore, necessary that teachers critically examine their current practices for planning and implementing literacy programs. As children explore sounds and babble, play games and interact with adults, listen to and enjoy songs, rhymes and stories, and engage in conversations in the context of everyday social and cultural experiences they build language skills. These skills provide a foundation for their literacy learning. Language is very essential for building relationships and social practices. The relationship between social and emotional competence and language ability seems to be reciprocal,  language serves to support social interactions and social interactions provides  a context for  further development of  linguistic skills. These skills are supported by interactions with adults and peers where opportunities for establishing and practicing language skills, role modeling, and offering feedback are provided.

Link:

http://www.qsa.qld.edu.au/downloads/p_10/qklg_pd_resource_supporting_literacy.pdf

week 11

WHAT:

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

During the workshop discussion we were asked to search big literacy and numeracy concepts in young children and how they form and their learning continuum. My colleagues and found a list of them including, phonology, receptive language, listening, gestures, symbols, drawing, spatial awareness, pragmatic skills, sequencing, turn taking, non- verbal communication, subject knowledge. Therefore I wanted to learn more about them and found these two articles.

MAIN ARGUMENT:

According to (Storch & Whitehurst, 2002) Research has demonstrated that a range of skills developed by the preliterate child lays the foundation for later reading and writing ability. They have defined emergent literacy as the skills, knowledge, and attitudes that are developmental precursors to reading and writing as well as the environments that support these development for example shared book reading.

They state that the concept of emergent literacy implies a continuum between pre reading and reading, in which literacy-related behaviors and activities taking place during the preschool period are essential aspects of the course of literacy development. The code-related skill base of emergent literacy includes the conventions of print e.g., knowing that writing goes from left to right and top to bottom across a page, beginning forms of writing e.g., writing one's name, knowledge of graphemes like naming letters of the alphabet and grapheme-phoneme correspondence e.g., that the letter b makes the /b/ sound, and phonological awareness e.g., that the word bat begins with the /b/ sound. 

In addition to code-related skills, a variety of oral language skills during the preschool period have been shown to contribute to a child's reading ability, including semantic,  their word knowledge, expressive and receptive vocabulary, syntactic knowledge of word order and grammatical rules, and conceptual knowledge as well as narrative discourse the ability to construct an original story a understand the role of these code-related and oral language skills as precursors to eventual literacy, it is important to consider the reading process and the development of reading ability. Reading requires the coordination and interaction of multiple skills, including recognition of individual letters, translation of letters into sounds, determination of the meaning of a word, and interpretation and understanding Findings from the model hold powerful implications for children from low-income backgrounds. They have  also stated that a  number of studies have documented social class differences in children's exposure to the particular literacy experiences shown to be important for the development of language and emergent literacy skills.

 The other reading on numeracy was by (Hannula, Räsänen & Lehtinen, 2007) and they explored how children differ in how much they spontaneously pay attention to quantitative aspects of their natural environment. They found that how this spontaneous tendency to focus on numeracy (SFON) is related to subitizing-based enumeration and verbal and object counting skills. In this exploratory study, children were tested individually at the age of 4–5 years on these skills. According to this article the three early numerical skills that develop during childhood. The first of these skills is subitizing-based number recognition  like the rapid and accurate number recognition of 1–4 objects without counting, a skill which  some believe builds on a non verbal pre attentional representational ability to individuate small sets of items . This ability has been suggested to be one of the significant elements for grasping the cardinal meanings of the first counting words. The second essential enumeration skill is verbally based object counting. It takes children a long time to reach meaningful object counting skills after they learn their first number word.

NOW WHAT:

 These two articles have provided a very useful and meaning full insight into how children develop their literacy and numeracy concepts and as a teacher we should provide children with more opportunities to engage and develop their concepts around literacy and numeracy, and I have also come to learn that children learn literacy and numeracy concepts in different ways and that  while teaching them these concepts the teacher should keep they should be age appropriate.

REFERENCES:

1: Storch, S. A., & Whitehurst, G. J. (2002). Oral language and code-related precursors to reading: evidence from a longitudinal structural model. Developmental psychology, 38(6), 934.

2: Hannula, M. M., Räsänen, P., & Lehtinen, E. (2007). Development of counting skills: Role of spontaneous focusing on numerosity and subitizing-based enumeration. Mathematical thinking and learning, 9(1), 51-57.

Portfolio Outcome

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

I strongly believe that as a teacher we can provide children with numerous literacy and numeracy experiences and this could only be done by building strong relationship with the child. During my professional experience i had an ample chance to observe various literacy and numeracy experience happening. Through which i have gained a useful insight into how children could be engaged in variety of literacy and numeracy experiences and i came to learn that literacy and numeracy is all part of the communication and how oral language is important in children's ability to engage in learning.which is important for a child's cognitive, social and emotional development. I had a child and was four years old and he was my focus child as i came to learn that this child was selected mute and won't talk to any one. In the begging i tried to read stories with her and communicate with her  but she wont respond, then one day i learned that she was very interested in hens and ducks and that she would be more engaged when i read a story about ducks and hens and then one day  she said my name. The next  day she bought a duck from home and showed it to me and on that day she made a drawing with five little ducks and flowers. Then afterwards in order to build on her literacy  learning i read a story with her called "Rosie's walk" and she was totally engrossed in the story and we would talk about different concepts like hay stock and over under and she would point to the beehive and say it's a beehive and has bees.After that day she began to talk with me and would be happy when she would see me.According to  " Literacy and Numeracy for learning and Life" there are strategies which can improve our attitudes to literacy and numeracy and they include:

■ Raise public awareness of the importance of oral and
written language in all its forms including print, writing and
digital media.

■ Foster an enjoyment of reading among children.

■ Create greater awareness of, and more positive attitudes
towards, Mathematics among the public.

■ Promote better attitudes to Mathematics among children to

improve outcomes at early childhood level.

■ Improve the oral-language competence of very young
children in early childhood care and education (ECCE)
settings and their readiness to develop early mathematical
language and ideas

 I believe that as a teacher and communities we can use these startegies to develop young children's literacy and numeracy.

LINKS:

http://www.education.ie/en/Publications/Policy-Reports/lit_num_strat_summary.pdf

week 10

Given very young children's development of language and abstraction, how do contextual, multimodal symbols and conventions support their encoding or decoding of the world around them?

WHAT?

This weeks discussion was about technician of literacy and numeracy in early childhood and as a technician how can we crack this code. In a class we had a discussion about how as a technician we can decode young children's development of understanding of concepts and processes. So i got very interested in how children develop their literacy and numeracy skills and i came across these two reading.

MAIN ARGUEMENT:

Dickinson et al (2003) emphasis that  research they have done has found  interrelationship among phonological awareness, letter knowledge, word identification, and several measures of oral language (e.g., receptive vocabulary, sentence imitation) and found that all the measures of oral language and literacy were significantly inter correlated. 

 They have also have found that oral language is closely  related to phonological sensitivity in the years before  direct reading instruction and also  that language, especially vocabulary, plays an important role in supporting reading during the initial stage when decoding is the primary challenge facing children.  

Their is a considerable evidence which  points to relationship  between a variety of oral language abilities and subsequent reading capabilities , with special attention given to phonological awareness. There is also substantial evidence found which is  pointing to the impact of literacy on language.  

They have argued that the system of interrelated language and cognitive systems that children create as they first become literate may become increasingly well organized with time. If children have significant gaps in some portion of this system at an early point, they may fail to create the robust literacy systems needed for the development of later literacy.

 The other reading was on numeracy by Kirova and Bhargava  (2002) which empisised that professional growth in three areas was important  for  teachers learning to guide young children's learning of mathematical concepts.

 First is the ability to recognize how children demonstrate their  understanding of mathematical concepts. 

Second is the ability to use mathematical language to guide their progress from behavioral to representational understanding of mathematical concepts.

 Third is the ability to assess systematically children's understanding of mathematical concepts.

 Then they have concluded that  checklists tracing the development of three fundamental mathematical concept includes 

1: one-to-one correspondence,

 2: classification, 

3: and seriation.

These are suggested as tools for teachers to monitor preschool children's learning of mathematical concepts and then plan appropriate learning experiences within children's zones of proximal development thus creating an environment that is mathematically empowering and mediating children's experiences in this environment establish the foundation for constructing, modifying, and integrating mathematical concepts in the minds of young children.

NOW WHAT:

I can see a lot of implication for my learning happening through these two reading as they describe how children's  oral language development and literacy is connected and can help us in understanding how children apply their knowledge of the world and the second reading on numeracy also shed a light on how children  demonstrate their concepts of mathematics and classifications and how as a teacher we can provide new experience and build on their prior knowledge.

REFERENCES:

1: Dickinson, D. K., McCabe, A., Anastasopoulos, L., Peisner-Feinberg, E. S., & Poe, M. D. (2003). The comprehensive language approach to early literacy: The interrelationships among vocabulary, phonological sensitivity, and print knowledge among preschool-aged children. Journal of Educational Psychology, 95(3), 465.

2: Kirova, A., & Bhargava, A. (2002). Learning to guide preschool children's mathematical understanding: A teacher's professional growth. ERIC Clearinghouse.

Portfolio Outcome

LEARNING OUTCOME: 1.2



Explaining how young children's literacy and numeracy learning can be socially conveyed through their behaviour, feelings or approach.


When i was on my professional learning experience in a kindergarten i had numerous learning opportunities and i also observed how children engage in various literacy and numeracy learning experiences with and without adult support therefore i am going to share my observation that i did on a child while engaged in literacy and numeracy learning.

Leuven's involvement scale:

Craft Table:

(Arranging papers and equipment's on the cardboard box)

TIME: 1:00 TO 1:15 PM

INDOOR

Teacher Initiated

Num of teacher: 3

Num of chilren: 15

NAME: Arshia

AGE: 3 years old

GENDER: GIRL

CONTEXT: EXPLORATORY

Observation:

She was very small and looking around to do something and struggling to talk her speech was not that fluent, i could hardly understand what she was saying but then she comes to a craft table and starts to colour the tissue paper and tell me it's pink and then starts to count one two three four and puts the glue on the tissue paper and tries to stick them on the cardboard box and then shows it to me and says" a duck" i said "wow, this is beautiful" and she gets excited and then she replies " a yellow duck" and then she again says" i am a duck" and starts to sing five little ducks song.

EYLF LEARNING OUTCOMES:

outcome1: Childtren have a strong sense of identity as she could negotiate with me confudently.

outcome 2: children are confident and involved learners as she could count and was very involved in the activity.


 Comment:

I think that in that observation i found a lot of literacy and numeracy learning happening through her behavior as she counted the numbers and knew the difference about colour's and could relate to the song and would be very happy when i would encourage her.

WEEK 9

WHAT:

As this week we discussed about participants and young children's meaning making which i thought was a very interesting discussion  as earlier i had never thought about the question how children make meaning and then i came across these two readings dealing with story reading and meaning making which i thought provided  a very useful and interesting insight into how children develop literacy and numeracy by reading stories.

MAIN ARGUMENT:

The literacy reading was by Isbell, R., Sobol, J., Lindauer, L., & Lowrance, A. (2004) and this reading claims that story reading has a strong  influence on the oral language development and comprehension of young children.

.It states that shared book reading benefits children in two way by providing them with acquisition of language and literacy skills.

.They also experience vocabulary growth, knowledge of handling books and many other skills.Children who are frequently exposed to storybook reading are more likely to use complex sentences, have increased literal and inferential comprehension skills, gain greater story concept development, increase letter and symbol recognition, and develop positive attitude.

The other reading was BY Young-Loveridge, J. M. (2004) and called " Effects on early numeracy of a program using number books and games". It states that  various literature suggests that books and stories can be used to enhance students’ mathematical thinking.It also purports that using mathematics storybooks is related to higher levels of mathematical activity. In summary, the results of the study show that playing number games and reading number stories and rhymes with a specialist teacher is an effective way to enhance the numeracy learning of young children.

This finding has important implications for teachers wanting to boost the numeracy skills of particular students who may be falling behind teachers in early childhood centers have an important role to play in supporting and enhancing the informal mathematical abilities which children bring to preschool. If early childhood teachers made a point of becoming more aware of which activities are appealing to particular children, they would be able to capitalize on the opportunities for mathematics learning.

NOW WHAT:

There is a lot of implication for teachers learning happening in these two readings on literacy and numeracy and how as a teacher we can use story books to enhance children's learning and and development by carefully choosing story books and helping children to make meaning of the world around them.

REFERENCES:

1: Isbell, R., Sobol, J., Lindauer, L., & Lowrance, A. (2004). The effects of storytelling and story reading on the oral language complexity and story comprehension of young children. Early Childhood Education Journal, 32(3), 157-163.

2: Young-Loveridge, J. M. (2004). Effects on early numeracy of a program using number books and games. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 19(1), 82-98.

READINGS

PARTICIPANTS:

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

What:

The two readings that i have chosen for this week are on literacy and numeracy are called " Moving Past “Right” or “Wrong” Toward a Continuum of Young Children’s Semantic Knowledge."and "Using children's literature to inspire K–8 Pre service teachers' future mathematics pedagogy". which are closely related to how we can make children participate more in literacy and numeracy experience by making them more meaningful and useful for them.

Main Argument:

I see a lot of implication for my learning happening through these two readings the first reading relating to literacy is called Moving Past “Right” or “Wrong” Toward a Continuum of Young Children’s Semantic Knowledge" by Christ (2011)  and it states that vocabulary development is a critical goal for early childhood education. A clear sense of children’s depth of semantic knowledge is necessary in order to plan and evaluate the effectiveness of instruction. This article proposes a continuum of young children’s semantic knowledge that stems from a conceptual analysis of literature across the fields of education, linguistics, and educational psychology. Nineteen categories of children’s word knowledge were identified and grouped into five hierarchically related levels: no understanding, schematically related understanding, contextual understanding, decontextual understanding, and paired understanding.

.The reading suggests that learning and development is most likely to occur when new experiences build on what a child already knows and is able to do and when those learning experiences also entail the child stretching a reasonable amount in acquiring new skills, abilities, or knowledge and to build on children’s knowledge of specific word meanings and that teachers need a valid, reliable, and efficient continuum for assessing the kinds of knowledge children have.

.Without such a continuum, teachers may focus solely on whether words are known or not known rather than consider what depth of knowledge children have acquired. Verhallen and Schoonen (1998) warn that when teachers do not attend to children’s depth of word knowledge the arrears of linguistically less proficient children may go unnoticed, and this poses   undesirable educational risks  and that teachers who are not well served when they are stranded without the resources, tools, and supports necessary to make sound instructional decisions. Therefore, a reliable and valid continuum for analyzing  the depth of children’s vocabulary  knowledge is crucial to inform instructional practices.

The second reading was about numeracy and called" Using children's literature to inspire K–8 pre service teachers' future mathematics pedagogy" by Ward (2005) and it states  that by incorporating children’s literature into the teaching of all content areas, in particular, mathematics, provides  a useful means to capture and engage more students’ attention and that  literature also provide a means for mathematics and language skills to develop simultaneously as children learn to listen, read, write, and talk about mathematics.

It also asserts that integrating literature into the mathematics curriculum provides a natural setting for observing mathematics in the real world, making it come alive and thus conveying real meaning to students.In a similar manner, Richardson (2000) believed that books chosen to read aloud to older students should contain provocative issues and moral dilemmas to stimulate critical thinking and discussion and promote collaborative construction of meaning.

NOW WHAT?

I think that these two readings provide a very valuable insight into how as a teacher we can make children's participation more effective and meaning full as by incorporating children's literature we can make the mathematical experiences more joyful and interesting and also how knowledge about children's earlier semantic knowledge can help  us to be more prepared in efficient as a teacher  and also can help  us to be effective planner in enhancing their knowledge and learning. The first reading on literacy is very useful as it sates that how a teacher should be equipped with the resources  and tools necessary to engage young children which i believe is very important as these tools help teacher to be more efficient in teaching and development of children and also that a teacher should be aware of the vocabulary knowledge of children so that she could be more prepared and aware of the different abilities and learning achievements of children. The other reading on mathematics is really very interesting as it states that a teacher can use literature to engage young children in maths as maths could be very boring and dry at time therefore a teacher can make it more interesting and enjoyable choosing story books that have mathematical concepts to stimulate children's learning.

REFERENCES:

1: Christ, T. (2011). Moving Past “Right” or “Wrong” Toward a Continuum of Young Children’s Semantic Knowledge. Journal of Literacy Research, 43(2), 130-158.

2: Ward, R. A. (2005). Using children's literature to inspire K–8 preservice teachers' future mathematics pedagogy. The Reading Teacher, 59(2), 132-143.

AN ABILITY: 

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

According to the "The  Kindergarten Programe" the teacher  should observe and listen, act as facilitators to guide children with thoughtful, open-ended questions.

• encourage children to observe and talk
among themselves and to the teacher
provide a rich variety of materials and
resources, and strategically question
and observe children to clarify, expand,
or discover the children’s thinking

• model how to plan, observe, and reflect

• listen to the children to help them make connections between prior knowledge and new discoveries

• demonstrate how to share and discuss
new ideas

When i was working in a kindergarten during the ten days observation period i saw that during mat time when the teacher read the stories to the children they seemed very enthusiastic most of them seemed involved. I noticed that children especially liked to listen to the the story called "Where's the green sheep" by Mem Fox and Judy Horeck, so during my four week blocks i decide to do the story again as a part of my lesson plan. I selected seven children of ages Three and Four, the main purpose behind selecting this particular story was that i had previously  observed that children were really interested in this story and it also had many mathematical and literacy concepts for children to learn for example it had different literacy words   numbers of the sheeps, colours and the concepts of  over, under, more, far, close. But i tried to do it in a different manner i used a pop up version of this story and incorporated different emotions to make the story more realistic and to make them understand different emotions like made happy and sad faces,which they replicated and at the end of the story i put a chair and tried to make them understand the concepts of up and down. I also tried to make the story interested by engaging them and by asking "But where's is the green sheep" and all of them would repeat the words and each time when the word came up they would get involved and would say but  " where is the green sheep". This experience gave me a confidence that i can engage children in story reading and can enhance their literacy and numeracy experiences.

EYLF LEARNING OUTCOME:

Children are confident and involved learners as they seemed involved in the literacy and numeracy concepts in the story .

LINK:

http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/curriculum/elementary/kindercurrb.pdf