Week 7

Readings Week 7
Emma Fitzpatrick 2107606

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

“National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) & National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM). (2010). Position Statement: Early Childhood Mathematics: Promoting Good Beginnings”

This weeks reading, I chose ‘Talk to me, baby!’ (Bardige, B. & Bardige, M, 2008) and ‘Promoting Good Beginnings’. I chose to read ‘Talk to me, baby!’ as I have always focused on children of kindergarten age, so I believe that I need to gain more knowledge in other areas. The reason I chose the numeracy reading ‘Promoting Good Beginnings’ was because I was looking to further my knowledge in numeracy.

In the numeracy reading ‘Promoting Good Beginnings’, there were 10 guidelines that teachers are able to follow in order to achieve high mathematical outcomes. These guidelines are as follows:

1. Enhance children’s natural interest in mathematics and their disposition to use it to make sense of their physical and social worlds
2. Build on children’s experience and knowledge, including their family, linguistic, cultural, and community backgrounds; their individual approaches to learning; and their informal- knowledge
3. Base mathematics curriculum and teaching practices on knowledge of young children’s cognitive, linguistic, physical, and social- emotional development
4. Use curriculum and teaching practices that strengthen children’s problem solving and reasoning processes as well as representing, communicating, and connecting mathematical ideas
5. Ensure that the curriculum is coherent and compatible with known relationships and sequences of important mathematical ideas
6. Provide for children’s deep and sustained interaction with key mathematical ideas
7. Integrate mathematics with other activities and other activities with mathematics
8. Provide ample time, materials, and teacher support for children to engage in play, a context in which they explore and manipulate mathematical ideas with keen interest
9. Actively introduce mathematical concepts, methods, and language through a range of appropriate experiences and teaching strategies
10. Support children’s learning by thoughtfully and continually assessing all children’s mathematical knowledge, skills, and strategies.

I found these guidelines so helpful and relevant to what I was looking for. These will help me recognise children’s strength and weaknesses, and then be able to work with the students to overcome them or challenge them. I have always struggled with numeracy and mathematical areas in education, so when I become an educator, I would really like to properly understand and successfully teach numeracy and mathematics to give students the best opportunities I can.

‘Talk to me, baby!’ explained and provided overviews into infants through to toddler’s language development. It explained how communication and talking to babies could vastly improve language development. Studies showed that infants growing up in ‘verbal families’ had 25+ points higher IQ than those that grow up in ‘less verbal families’. The article provided ways to engage with infants to help enrich their language development, just a few of them were: using voice to soothe an infant, engage in frequent baby talk conversations and allow babies to listen to different sounds.

I hope to be able to work with children younger than kindergarten in the future so I will be able to make observations and apply my knowledge about literacy in the area. I will also use these guidelines stated above to be able to teach mathematics in the best way I can do.

(N) National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) & National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM). (2010). Position Statement: Early Childhood Mathematics: Promoting Good Beginnings. Retrieved 20 July, 2012 from  http://www.naeyc.org/files/naeyc/file/positions/psmath.pdf

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