4 BEST BLOGS

1: OUTCOME: 1.3
READING BLOG: READING 2 TO 8 SEPTEMBER

2: OUTCOME: 3.1
READING BLOG: WEEK 10

3: READING: WEEK 9
PORTFOLIO OUTCOME: 4.3


4: READING WEEK: 7
 PORTFOLIO OUTCOME: 2.1

portfolio

ACTION  PLAN:

• Recognises subtle differences & levels in literacy & numerical learning & development according to age, ability, culture & social circumstances. 2.2    
  
  
  CURRENT SITUATION:
  
  
  I think  a child’s ability to transition successfully to school depends on their own personal characteristics like temperament, personality, social background and cultural background and these factors affect how children develop their literacy and numeracy concepts.
  
  
  In Australia, the transition of young children to school is likely to be more challenging for children from financially disadvantaged families, Indigenous families, families with children who have a disability, and culturally and linguistically diverse families. Children from low socio economic background and different cultural background can struggle in the beginning with their literacy’s and numeracy’s and that as a teacher we should be aware about these differences in their learning capabilities.
  
  
  QUESTION THAT I HAVE:
  
  
  How can we as a teacher be aware of these differences and how to help and facilitate these children and contribute towards their learning and development.
  
  
  OUTCOME THAT I WANT TO ACHIEVE:
  
  
  I thought long and hard about how to tackle this issue, as it is very important for the personal learning and development of an early childhood teacher to be aware about these learning differences in literacy and numeracy, that children belonging to different culture, social background and abilities have.
  
  Because culture and language are critical components of children’s development, practices cannot be developmentally appropriate unless they are responsive to cultural and linguistic diversity. Each child is a unique person with an individual pattern and timing of growth, as well as individual personality, temperament, learning style, and experiential and family background. All children have their own strengths, needs, and interests; for some children, special learning and developmental needs or abilities are identified. Given the enormous variation among children of the same chronological age, a child’s age must be recognized as only a crude index of developmental maturity.
  
  For children, successful transitions into and from the early learning environment can be facilitated by a range of approaches such as assisting children to understand the routines and practices of the settings they are transitioning into.  During both the transition to early learning environments and to school, a partnership between parents and educators, institutions is very important.
  
  
  
  RESOURCE THAT CAN HELP Me:
  
  Copple, C., & Bredekamp, S. (2009). Developmentally appropriate practice in early childhood programs serving children from birth through age 8. National Association for the Education of Young Children. 1313 L Street NW Suite 500, Washington, DC 22205-4101.
  
  
  
  
   

WEEK 12

How can we encourage very young children's critical literacy and numeracy skills? By modelling or guiding their questioning? By reflecting on and challenging the texts or numerical issues (e.g. fairness) they encounter?


Key to this focus is the educator's role in supporting the child's development of theory-of-mind in order to understand that these texts or numerical issues are not neutral, as they represent certain points-of-view and silence others.


WHAT:

This week we looked into how as a teacher we can understand and promote the concept of fairness while teaching young children and how many story books and characters have stereotypes and that various text are not nuetral, so I read these two readings

MAIN ARGUMENT:

According to (Morgan, 2009) the prejudice towards different people start from early childhood and that teaching children to have multiple perspective in early age is going to solve problems relating to prejudice and racial differences, they state that conflict in schools can happen due to text books and courses that do not rightly represent other persons culture. According to them in order to help children develop multiple perspective teacher’s need to pay attention to not only how to teach but what to teach as multiple perspective can enhance children’s view of various topics. Teacher’s must be aware that not all children’s book represent cultural minority group authentically. They have provide different strategies that teacher’s can avoid biased children’s book, picture book biographies proposing multiple perspective, interactive read alouds.

The other reading on numeracy which I got from "I cannot be bothered about my reading" as I was unable to find anything relating to numeracy and fairness in early childhood was by(Wood, 2005) He wanted to know could grade one children do mathematical work that addressed social justice issues with a focus on power at their level. He said that during his class he often read books and talks about the mathematics in them. One favorite author, Shaun Tan, provided the idea for the first-graders final The Rabbits, written by John Marsden and illustrated by Tran (2003) which is an allegorical work about the colonization of Australia. Kangaroos represent the indigenous people called Aborigines in Australia and rabbits represent the colonizers.


This book shows the ways European colonists destroyed and replaced the Aborigines’ traditional culture and relationships. The author wanted to know that children could use their mathematical understanding to explore the power issues they’d read about in The Rabbits. Earlier the children had been working extensively with Cuisenaire rods, and he also wanted to know whether they might be able to use these manipulatives to explore the social justice issues in the book. He was amazed to find out that they took up the plurality of mathematics which taught him much about their knowledge in mathematics. According to him a complex mathematics classroom allows for the experience of diverse children. Jack’s words about how deeply people are mathematical, Melissa’s expressions of equality and inequality, and Kayla’s shifts identity proved that children showed that how children understood the issues of power and equality by using Cuisenaire rods. Which showed that children as an individual who can use mathematics to describe their sense of social justice and equality.

NOW WHAT:
 

I think the article on numeracy is very important as it dealt specifically with the big concept that maths is everywhere and he tried to incorporate this concept in his teaching by making student aware that maths is everywhere and that there are different forms of maths, and by reading this story book he simultaneously prompted discussion about fairness and equality and mathematics. While other reading on literacy I think this all is relevant to making children critical thinkers and to strive for justice. The other reading also very important as it suggests that teaching children to have multiple perspective can help in broadening their concepts about racial differences and fairness.


REFERENCES:

1: Morgan, H. (2009). Picture book biographies for young children: A way to teach multiple perspectives. Early Childhood Education Journal, 37(3), 219-227.

2: (L) Wood, J. (2005). Moses’s story: Critical literacy and social justice in an urban kindergarten. Beyond the Journal: Young Children on the Web, July, Retrieved 22^nd July, 2011 from http://www.naeyc.org/files/naeyc/file/vop/VoicesWood.pdf

Action Plan

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



CURRENT SITUATION:

In our workshop discussion we talked about different literacy and numeracy developmental milestones in the young children and learning continuum they included, phonology, receptive language, gestures, print concepts, semantics syntax, Symbols, drawing, turn taking, spatial awareness, non-verbal communication. Preschoolers' receptive and expressive vocabularies continue to expand as they learn more nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. They also begin to understand and use more closed-class words such as prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions, and auxiliary verbs. By four years of age, children understand and are able to label primary colors according to (Owens, 2001). Children learn red, blue and yellow before they learn green, brown and orange. Four-year-olds are also able to count to five and understand numbers up to three. They will be able to count up to five objects accurately and will be able to bring someone three of something when asked to do so. Geist (2009) has suggested that evidence shows that even very young babies have abstract understanding of quantity and a more concrete, object-related sense of numbers. Also, from very young age children have the ability to tell the large quantity from the small quantity of stuff.

QUESTION THAT I WANT TO INVESTIGATE:

Do all children develop these milestone at the same age or does it varies and depends on other circumstances because these developmental milestone can help a lot while teaching and further learning and development of the child.

RESOURCES AT MY DISPOSAL:

According to a resources that i have found, the stages that children pass through in the development of speech and language are very consistent, but the exact age when they hit these milestones varies a lot.  Factors such as the child's inborn ability to learn language and other skills the child is learning, the amount and kind of language the child hears, and how people respond to communication attempts can slow down or accelerate the speed of speech and language development. This makes it difficult to say with certainty where any young child's speech and language development will be in 3 months, or 1 year.

There are, however, certain factors that may increase the risk that a late-talking child in the 18- to 30-month-old age range, and with normal intelligence, will have continuing language problems. These factors include: Receptive language ,use of gestures, progress in language development.

According to the resource "The Continuum of Development" describes predictable sequences of development within broad domains of development. It helps early childhood practitioners observe and document children’s emerging skills, based on an understanding of children’s development. The main purpose is to use that information to plan curriculum that is meaningful for individual children and groups of children because it is grounded in an understanding of child development.

IMPLICATION FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING:

"The Continuum of Development" is a tool that can help early childhood practitioners and families exchange information about children’s growing skills as a teacher it can be very helpful  to know at which developmental stage of literacy and numeracy are children at in order to make their knowledge development meaning ful.

REFERENCE:

Geist, E.(2009). Infants and toddlers. In Children Are Born Mathematicians: Supporting Mathematical Development, Birth to Age 8(pp.135-182).Upper Saddle River, New Jersey:Pearson Education Inc.

LINKS:

http://www.theroadmap.ualberta.ca/understandings/research/37-60

http://www.children.gov.on.ca/htdocs/English/topics/earlychildhood/early_learning_for_every_child_today.aspx

http://www.asha.org/public/speech/disorders/lateblooming.htm