Portfolio: Continuum Draft 2

This week for my portfolio I have completed my second draft of my literacy and numeracy continuums.

For the numeracy continuum, I have proceeded as planned. That is, to follow the original source of the Geist continuum and then to summarise key aspects of it to complete my remaining two sections, which were the 36-42 months and 42-48 months sections.

In doing this, I grappled with the ideas of what ‘some’ children can do and the ‘average’ child is able to do at that age, references to which are used heavily in the PBS source. In the end, I was able to use the ‘average’ metric for much of my continuum, which I was pleased with.

The second major change came after discussion with colleagues and also my tutor. That is, how to reconcile the central scale on my numeracy continuum with the literacy one, as the numeracy used ages and the literacy used generalised developmental stages, ‘Awareness’, ‘Exploration’ and so on.

The conclusion we came to was that, given that individual children can vary so markedly in their development, the developmental stages would be a more appropriate model. I probably wouldn’t have come up with this solution on my own, so I was grateful for the collaboration.

However, I needed to work out the implementation on my own. The original 5 stages represented a child’s development from birth-8. Numerically, the first issue is that it doesn’t divide neatly! The second issue is that, even if I were to divide it down the middle (for birth to age 4), this would mean that my scale would end halfway through the ‘Inquiry’ stage. ‘Inqu’ just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

However, my numeracy reading reflection this week stressed the importance of having high expectations for students. With this in mind, I made the decision that not only could (some) children complete the ‘Inquiry’ stage by 48 months, they could also be utilising their knowledge as well, e.g. using a map to locate an object in a room.

As such, I have applied the first 4 of the 5 developmental stages to both of my continuums. Both are available below. Please note, you need to click on them to view the high resolution versions.  

Numeracy Continuum:

Literacy Continuum:

Sources:

http://www.pbs.org/parents/childdevelopmenttracker/four/mathematics.html

http://www.decd.sa.gov.au/literacy/files/links/link_157513.pdf

Week 7, October 31st

What and why?

My literacy reading for this week is “Early adopters: Playing new literacies and pretending new technologies in print-centric classrooms”. I chose this reading because it not only discussed literacy conventions, a hallmark of the ‘technician’ component of this course, but also business terms and video games that I am familiar with.

Central Premise

The paper highlights a situation where over fifty percent of kindergarten (and primary school) teachers identify themselves as ‘technology novices’. As such, technology can be seen as entertainment only, or a minor addition to the actual learning delivered in print. In the paper itself, teachers noted that a focus on high-stakes literacy testing allowed less time for a technology focus.

Much of the text focused on an invented battle video game created by two boys, and the process of making meaning within this. As a regular video game player this was complex even to me, but it was interesting to see this viewed from an academic perspective, e.g. ‘non-linear narrative structure, quite distinctive spatial layouts, ongoing and cumulative challenge levels, multiple and interactive cueing systems’.

In practice

I think it’s essential for educators to stay up to date with technology in order to be able to understand and communicate with students. However, I am still conflicted about introducing additional technology into the classroom at the centres where I currently teach, despite them currently being quite ‘low tech’ in my assessment. On the one hand, I feel as though technology activities are largely indoors, and additional outdoor time is useful to combat the growing obesity issue. On the other, I feel as though a quote by Luke (1999, cited in Wohlwend, 2009) raises a valid point:

“If we don’t [become involved], corporate software developers will maintain their control over content design that invariably shapes how and what [the software we use will] teach.”

That is to say, if we as educators have no involvement in the process, how are we able to have a positive influence on the directions this technology takes?

Reference:

Wohlwend, K. E. (2009). Early adopters: Playing new literacies and pretending new technologies in print-centric classrooms. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 9(2), 117-140. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/61860267?accountid=10910

What and why?

This week I searched for numeracy readings specifically related to development, in the hope that I could relate it to the numeracy continuum I am in the process of solidifying. I found that adding this extra requirement to my search made it more difficult to find articles, as I am now narrowing my search based on papers that are:

•  Peer-reviewed
•  Less than 10 years old
• About numeracy
•  Hopefully about children 4 years and younger
• Relevant to the ‘technician’ concept
• Relevant to my continuum

The article that best fit this description was ‘Numeracy in the early years: Project good start’ from the Australian Council for Educational Research. The study examined the numeracy skills of more than 1600 pre-school students who were tracked up until the end of their first year of school. A number of ‘assessment instruments’ (gap analyses / tests) were used to gauge the children’s skill levels.

Central Premise

It was found that girls outperformed boys on tasks that required verbal processing and fine motor-coordination skills, which was considered unsurprising as this is seen as common from a developmental perspective. Indigenous students performed less well in all areas assessed.

In centres that implemented numeracy in a subtle, play-based manner, it was found that those who used ‘systematic / planned play’ produced better results than ‘random play’. These terms were not elaborated on, but I assume this means that the activities were not purely child-led but had higher degrees of teacher preparation, facilitation, and interaction.

[Such a great idea, expanding on the numeracy within 'The very hungry caterpillar]

The report highlighted three key areas typical of pre-schools with exceptional numeracy performance:

1. “High expectations and clear goals, and an ability to communicate these clearly;
2. An awareness of the need for direct, formal development of children’s concepts in numeracy, and so having pedagogical focus on numeracy as well as literacy. Explicit plans for numeracy as a separate area of the program;
3. An awareness of numeracy on the part of the teacher, embedded in materials bought and made, and in the use of mathematical language with the children.”

(Thomson, 2004, p.16)

In practice

I feel like point three goes without saying. Pre-schools run by educators with poor awareness of numeracy seem very unlikely to perform well. However, the first two points are well worth remembering. The concept of having a ‘play-based’ and ‘child-led’ environment seems very common, but it’s important to remember that this should be tempered with an appropriate level of formal focus and planning. High expectations is also an aspect that I am thinking more about as I develop. When children say to me “I can’t do X”, I am taking this more as a challenge than a ‘get out of jail free card’.

Reference

Thomson, S. (2004). Numeracy in the early years: Project good start. Australian Primary Mathematics Classroom, 9(4), 14-17. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/61906121?accountid=10910

Portfolio Week 6 - Continuum First Draft

For Numeracy, I've been trying to adapt the Geist continuum from the custom book to the purposes of this course. The difficulty is that the course covers up to 4 years whereas the continuum in the textbook covers only to age 3. So, I will need to source additional material. In the meantime though, here is my first draft:

I have found a fantastic resource for my literacy continuum from the DECD, called 'English language & literacy, Birth–Age 8, Planning for learning. It is split into three parts as follows:

Each of the above section also has a large number of examples, so I find it highly practical. These are split into three subsections as follows:

1) Language

2) Texts and Contexts

3) Strategies

The full document is available here:

http://www.decd.sa.gov.au/literacy/files/links/link_157513.pdf

Week 6, October 23rd

What and why?

This week for my literacy reading I looked at ‘Readers as text code breakers’. This ‘code breaker’ aspect appealed to me as it alluded to ideas of espionage and secret missions. I was not disappointed, by page three I was struggling my way through a secret message, and on page four I was learning about ‘word attack skills’!

As a side note, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the exciting section was actually largely a summary of several Freebody and Luke articles. I must confess I was actually anti-Freebody and Luke up until this point, due to their disdain for paragraph usage in their paper we were provided earlier this semester. I was pleased to see that their ideas did live up to the hype after all, they just need Harris, Turbill, Fitzsimmons & McKenzie (or Jovanovic) working tirelessly to convert these ideas into concise English for me to be able to follow the ideas.

Central Premise

Text code breakers “Attend to visual information and to non-visual information to decipher text”. They build up a range of knowledge, such as the conventions like grammar in writing. They also have a range of skills, such as the aforementioned ‘word attack’ skills which include sounding a word out, and breaking a word down into its component syllables, the awkwardly-named ‘syllabification’.

I also learned about ‘phonemes’, a term I had heard of but never knew the definition of. I was interested to learn that without an understanding of these key sounds, “children are most likely to have serious difficulty in learning to read and write”.

In practice

I found the section on ‘Scaffolding Children as Text Code Breakers’ to contain the most practical advice. I have included the list as it isn’t too long. I found the idea of linking reading to ‘meaningful contexts’ to be worthwhile advice, and I immediately thought of the recipe ideas with Ali and Luca’s bakery we discussed earlier.

I don’t know whether I would use it in the method presented, but I like the idea of the six groups of ‘code breaking behaviours’ listed here. Whilst we’ve discussed that ‘testing’ is becoming an out-dated concept, at least having a list of behaviours to look out for is a very useful starting point. I could be diagnosing ‘graphophonic miscues’ of my own before long.

Criticism

I found the sections on ICT to be oddly out-dated for 2006, with phrases like “CD-Roms are not part of the internet” as well as “And what about the computer keyboard?” Perhaps this is just because ICT is second nature to me. I did a little research and note that there is also a 2001 edition of the same book, it seems like this maybe wasn’t updated for the 2006 edition.

Reference

Harris, P., Turbill, J., Fitzsimmons, P. & McKenzie, B. (2006). Readers as text code breakers, Reading in the Primary School years(pp. 114-158). South Melbourne: Social Science Press. 

What and why?

My numeracy reading for this week is the ‘Early number’ chapter from ‘Teaching mathematics in primary schools’. Whilst the article approaches early number from a school context, it is invaluable in that it frequently discusses which point children tend to be at in their number learning when they arrive at school. E.g. “Before they begin formal schooling, many young students have the capacity to subitise” or “Many children can count to 10 before they commence school”.

  

Central Premise

There are a great deal of topics covered over the chapter including classification, patterning, counting stages, counting strategies, conservation of number and so on. I find the ‘jump strategy’ and ‘split strategy’ of counting particularly appealing as it represents computation visually.

Something that surprised me was that there is apparently debate over whether base 10 blocks should be used to teach place value. This is interesting to me as I have a maths subject this semester where we have been looking at base 10 blocks, and I wasn’t aware of the debate. This is something I may research further in future.

In practice

As well as researching base 10 blocks and jump / skip counting further, I also liked the idea of presenting mathematical word problems in a variety of ways. This lends itself to my comfort with words over numbers, but also allows word problems to cover a variety of practical situations that will hopefully be relevant to the student’s life.

Reference

Zeuenbergen, R., Dole, S. & Wright, R. (2004). Early number, Teaching mathematics in primary schools (pp. 121-148). Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin.

Portfolio Week 5 - Recognition of personal prejudices

For this portfolio, I specifically wanted to focus on outcome 4.3 by looking at my own prejudices and how I propose to try and overcome them. To provide some background, when I first went to live in the Netherlands in 2011 I discovered to my surprise that I was more similar to other ‘macho’ Australian men than I thought. I refused to ride on the back of my girlfriend’s bicycle and couldn’t really explain why other than it felt ‘wrong’.

Perhaps similarly, there are many occupations that are gender imbalanced, and sometimes the reasons people think this is the case are just as vague and unhelpful. For example:

“When I started as a nurse student myself, all those decades ago… we were starting to come into the profession in fairly regular numbers, and at one stage we thought that [the percentage of males] is likely to get up to 15, 20, 25 per cent but it never has, and it’s not clear to us as to why that is.”

Source: http://lipmag.com/featured/the-gender-imbalance-in-female-dominated-occupations/

What I think many people could agree on is that all professions should offer people pathways to pursue them, and not be blocked based on societal perceptions of whether that role is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ for a particular gender. Perceptions can be formed from a very young age, and as such, I think it’s important that educators, to quote the Hippocratic oath, at least ‘do no harm’ in this regard.

So, in order to challenge some of these stereotypes, I came up with 6 occupations that I perceive as gender-biased in one way or another, and sought out pictures depicting someone from the opposite gender carrying it out. My idea is that these could be used in a room to provide children (and educators such as myself) with examples that run contra to our expectations. 

Here are my 6 posters. Please note that I have linked them rather than uploaded them due to very large file sizes, so they would be suitable for printing.

Female engineer

http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/pls/portallive/docs/1/64437699.JPG

·     Female ICT specialist

http://blogs.cisco.com/wp-content/uploads/Women-in-ICT_gallery.jpg

·     Female welder

http://newsroom.lincolnelectric.com/images/9026/media_gallery/JessiCombs8.jpg

·     Male nurse

http://www.jacksonnursing.com/uploads/2011/07/aa-male-nurse.jpg

·     Male early childhood teacher

http://www.thestar.com/content/dam/thestar/life/parent/2013/02/07/men_stand_out_as_daycare_workers/nicholas_earle.jpg

·     Male dancer

http://balletnews.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/audition-attitude.jpg

Just the act of seeking these images out was insightful. I found some of them very difficult to find a positive image of, for example female construction worker images seem to be largely caricatures or ‘sexy’ Halloween outfits, so I had to scrap that category.

I also found some of the male ballet dancer photos confronting. I think this is partly because many of these were scantily clad, but also I think part of this is due to my own prejudices, something that I will need to continue to work on.

Week 5, October 16th + Portfolio 2.1

The first reading I chose this week was ‘Risk Factors for Children’s Receptive Vocabulary

Development from Four to Eight Years in the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children’. I found it via the DECD Policy Scan as recommended by Jessie, which I pursued as I was interested in finding an efficient way of finding useful readings without resorting to the ‘Can’t be bothered’ list.

Though the age range of the 4000+ children in the study was 4-8, I believe it was worth investigating for two reasons. Firstly, because it’s about how risk factors deemed to be present by age 4 affected vocabulary development in the following years. That is to say, these risk factors would then be present and in some cases, detectable, by an early childhood educator. Secondly, I thought the focus on vocabulary development was highly relevant to the current ‘Technician’ topic.

I found the article utterly confusing and user-unfriendly, but I was able to extract some meaning from it through sheer stubbornness.  

  

 Such odd formatting. Both on the same page.

As I understood it, the authors suggested that the study population was divided into those with and without various risk factors at age 4. By risk factors, they mean factors that were associated with a risk of lower receptive vocabulary growth. This is a problem because receptive vocabulary is “the foundation for language acquisition and literacy”.

Examples of these risks included Maternal Non- English Speaking Background, low school readiness, child not read to at home, as well as having four or more siblings.

The results in some cases were contrary to what could be expected. Many of these factors were actually correlated with an increased growth in receptive vocabulary. However, what was unsurprising to me is that the ‘risk’ group did not catch up with the non-risk group by age 8. To me, the key finding related to children growing up in a low socio-economic area. As I understood it, at age 8, the gap between children with and without this disadvantage was equivalent to the risk group being eight months behind in vocabulary development.

If nothing else, I learnt what receptive vocabulary means, essentially your vocabulary for reading and listening. In order to combat the issues highlighted in this paper, the authors recommend ‘a broad-based or universal ‘‘scaffold’’ of developmental opportunity and interventions able to address multiple risks’. This seems too vague and broad to be of much use to me at this stage. On an individual level however, one option would be working with children from low socio-economic backgrounds and offering as many opportunities for listening and reading comprehension as possible. The challenge, then, would be balancing this against the other, often equally important considerations of early childhood teaching.

On a lighter note, the author contributions section is very odd:

All 5 authors contributed to all 3 sections. Good.

Reference:

Taylor CL, Christensen D, Lawrence D, Mitrou F, Zubrick SR (2013) Risk Factors for Children's Receptive Vocabulary Development from Four to Eight Years in the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children. PLoS ONE 8(9): e73046. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0073046

The reading I chose for numeracy this week was ‘Making sense of mathematical graphics: The development of understanding abstract symbolism’. I chose this because it related to the concept of the ‘technician’ through abstraction and symbols.

The authors state that ‘In this paper we develop our theory of ‘Bi-numeracy’ and show the importance of children's own invented symbolism’. Unfortunately, the idea of ‘bi-numeracy’ the authors developed was not explained clearly. I had to track down a transcript of a conference presentation where they said:

“through gradually ‘weaving’ their informal marks and the standard symbols of mathematics, [children] come to understand the ‘foreign language’ of written school mathematics . We term this ‘bi-numeracy’ since the children become competent in two graphical systems (their personal, informal mathematical graphics and standard abstract mathematical symbols and calculations)”.

My advice, if you’re trying to coin an academic phrase, come up with a short, clear definition and use it regularly, especially in future papers that are about the same topic. Case in point, the original paper has been available for 10 years, and a Google search for “bi-numeracy” results in 108 hits. Moving on.

The authors collected 700 samples of children’s symbols over 12 years and analysed them. Their feeling was that children using their own symbols was a good thing, as it allowed them to ‘bridge the gap’ towards the abstract mathematics of school.

There were two other key points. The first was that teachers in the UK are over-reliant on worksheets. That may well be the case. I believe that children should have a wide range of numeracy experiences, particularly involving problem solving with a real-world context.

However, the other suggestion was that teachers were not supportive enough of children’s personal symbols, and as I understood it, that teachers should respect and learn these symbols. In small class sizes, and within the birth-4 focus of this course, I can see how this could be a possibility. However, as children get older, or in classes with larger numbers of pupils, I think this is impractical.

In practice then, I would support children in discussing the mathematical symbols they create, and question them about their meaning.

Reference:

Carruthers, E., & Worthington, M. (2005). Making sense of mathematical graphics: The development of understanding abstract symbolism. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 13(1), 57-79. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/61890916?accountid=10910

Update: 21/11/2013

I am resubmitting this reading reflection as I believe it aligns with Outcome 2.1: Provides a thorough account of these developmental influences, supported by key theorists, frameworks, literature &/or research.

I have chosen this reflection in particular as both of the reflections relate to development. However, this is far more so the case with the former than the latter, as it relates specifically to research on a range of developmental influences.

As mentioned in a comment provided to me via email, I agree that the first paper is a useful starting point for investigating further how educators can work towards preventing or shortening the 'receptive vocabulary' gap from an early age.

Portfolio Week 4 - A reading experience

Yesterday I had a relief shift in the 3-5 room at my centre. One of the intentional teaching experiences I had was reading a story to a handful of children, Dinosaurs' Day Out by Nick Sharratt. The book is designed to give children an introduction to map reading skills, something I had been thinking about since it was mentioned in an earlier seminar.

The book introduces the map early and shows (via big green dinosaur hands) the origin and desired destination of the two anthropomorphic dinosaurs. The children varied in age and engagement level, and some had some cellophane from the craft table and were happy enough to watch the story through the cellophane without interacting much.

Others however, like Adam and Maria (names changed) had read the book before and were highly engaged. What I felt the book did well was to highlight a number of symbols, not only seen on maps and roads, but also those that might be encountered on a road trip, like at a service station. Adam and Maria were very keen to share their knowledge of which symbols they could already recognise, which were the vast majority of them.

So, given that they were already competent in their symbol knowledge, I tried to extend this by finding difficult ones. At the service station, there was a petrol tanker with three signs on it. “Danger”, a skull and crossbones logo, and a fire (flammable) logo. Adam had little trouble with ‘crossbones’, but the fire was just ‘fire!’. ‘So’, I asked ‘Who knows what flammable means?’. This led to an interesting discussion about the flammability of fuel, and why nobody can smoke at a petrol station. On reflection, if I could do it again I would have emphasised the letters in ‘Danger’ also, which I missed as we pursued the other avenues.

Later, the dinosaurs passed a forest with more signs. This time, there was a ‘No campfires’ sign, highlighted by a fire logo with a red strikethrough. Seizing the opportunity, I tested them again. Again, the answer was ‘Fire!’. By this time, Harry had wandered over and joined us. When I said that the sign meant ‘No fires’, and asked why that might be, Harry jumped in quickly: “Because the trees might all catch on fire, and then the animals would get burnt”. The others agreed, nodding sagely.

All in all I found that the book was useful for prompting discussions like these. The central premise of teaching map usage I found to be quite awkward, as to do this you would have to turn back to the start of the book each time it asks a question about the directions. In a one-on-one situation with a 5 year old, I think this would probably be fine, but with a larger mixed group, I was more concerned with keeping them engaged and extending their learning.

I felt as though this session went well. However, I would welcome peers comments about how else I might have gone about things, and particularly, if there is other numeracy or literacy learning in books like these that I’ve neglected to mention.

Week 4, October 10th

This week for the literacy component I decided to investigate storytelling, as this is an aspect of the ‘participant’ role (as well as early childhood education overall) that I find particularly interesting.

My database search resulted in three key readings that I thought were worth investigating further. Fittingly, my initial examination could be compared to the Goldilocks fairy tale. The first reading, ‘Parental influence on the development of children's storytelling’, was too dry. It was also way too poorly-edited for my liking. Seven hundred and fifty nine word paragraphs? A new record, sure, but no thanks.

The second reading, ‘Listening to Nysia: Storytelling as a Way into Writing in Kindergarten’ was too fluffy. It was written in a highly engaging manner, but it was so qualitative and the evidence was so anecdotal, I would be hesitant to apply it to my own teaching.

The third reading, ‘An enhanced concept map approach to improving children’s storytelling ability’ was just right. It had enough quantitative evidence to feel generalisable, whilst also being based on visual maps and computer software, which are areas I’m comfortable with.

The article suggested that a range of tools now exist to promote children’s storytelling ability. The authors wanted to test whether a tool was reliable on its own for children to produce good quality stories, or if additional scaffolding made a difference. The additional scaffolding came in the form of a simple map outlining the key elements that make up a story:

The results were that teachers graded the students almost 50% higher when they had received the additional scaffolding. Further, the students from the scaffolding group graded themselves around 25% higher also.

As someone who is in general a fan of technology and computers, as well as a self-assessed visual learner, I am attracted to the idea of using technology as an early childhood educator. This article brings home for me the lesson that technology alone probably isn’t a silver bullet. Instead, we need to focus on ensuring children have a solid grasp of the core concepts of whatever it is we’re teaching first.

References:

Horn, M., 2005. Listening to Nysia: Storytelling as a Way into Writing in Kindergarten. Language Arts, 83(1), pp. 33-41.

Liu, C., Chen, H. S., Shih, J., Huang, G., & Liu, B. (2011). An enhanced concept map approach to improving children's storytelling ability. Computers & Education, 56(3), 873-884. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/851226290?accountid=10910

Marjanovic-Umek, L., Fekonja-Peklaj, U., & Podlesek, A. (2012). Parental influence on the development of children's storytelling. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 20(3), 351-370. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1238191159?accountid=10910

For this week’s numeracy reading I chose ‘Emergent mathematical thinking in the context of play’. I was initially drawn to the idea of play and mathematics, as I thought play was relevant given the participant theme and underlying concept of experimentation. Play is also a term that seems to be topical both in my studies and in the centre where I now work.

I wasn’t initially enthralled by the reading, but despite the paper being four years old, I found the following quote mirroring one I’d heard just the day before on the radio:

“mathematics and natural sciences are particularly important for upholding the technological innovations that are deemed essential for the knowledge society and its economy.”

This piqued my curiosity, I was keen to see how they linked the two.

In fact, the link seemed to be fairly peripheral, but the initial premise was worthy of further attention. The central argument the article was suggesting was that play based teaching, such as the ‘Bildung’ and ‘Developmental Education’ methods, were more effective than rote training. For example, in a study of 34 students, the finding was that the play-based curriculum scored above the national norm for numeracy ability. However, they also mentioned that in the last test, the score was in fact equal to the national norm, rather than higher.

The other two key studies that are highlighted in the paper were larger with 239 and 137 participants. The results of these seemed to be positive, but not outstanding, with ‘average’, ‘moderate’, and ‘small but significant’ effect sizes. I imagine this may be the day to day reality of professional academia. Not every result can be outstanding, otherwise it would cease to be outstanding.

In terms of how this study can be practically applied, I found that the study supported the idea of naming the mathematical component of activities and play as children carry them out. This is similar to the naming of feelings that is encouraged at my work, so I see this as a reinforcement and extension of this idea. Not ground-breaking, but a useful reminder to be added to the day to day reality of an educator.

Reference:

van Oers, B. (2010). Emergent mathematical thinking in the context of play. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 74(1), 23-37. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/742871767?accountid=10910