Week 7

Why?

For my second post within the technician module, I have decided to explore children’s literacy and numeracy development in terms of the different stages and the order these occur in.  From readings and class discussions I am hoping to post a learning continuum for my outcome, one that I can continue to work on, and change.

What?

LITERACY

Levine & Munsch (2010) outlines stages of young children’s language development, although emphasis is not put on the ages, as children develop language at different rates. The first development stage is “Infants’ Preverbal Communication”, the early stages of this includes crying, cooing and babbling (Levine & Munsch, 2010). Babies’ crying is first only a reflexive behaviour, but it comes communicative when babies learn it is a signal and it can provide relief from hunger, discomfort and loneliness. Around the ages of two to four, they join the conversation, as they coo, parent respond and talk back (Levine & Munsch, 2010). It is at 4 – 6 months that babies begin to make one sound syllables, and at 6 – 8 months they the join different sounds together; the most common sounds are /b/, /d/ and /m/ (Levine & Munsch, 2010). Within the preverbal communication stage infants also engage in joint attention and use gestures and sign language.  Pointing is a common gesture used by infants, and is continued to be used throughout their language development. Infant’s gestures, and parents response to them is an important interaction that enhances language development, particularly contributing to their vocabulary and comprehension (Levine & Munsch, 2010).

The second stage described is “Toddlers’ Development of words and sentences”, this stage starts by babies learning their first words, which may come from the babbling sounds they play with (Levine & Munsch, 2010). First words, are often made up, as language comprehension comes before language production, infants begin to understand words around 9 months, while their development of words occurs around 13 months (Levine & Munsch, 2010). In this stage infants begin to develop their vocabulary and around the age of two they have around 200 – 500 words. During this second year, toddlers begin to understand that words are symbols, which stand for objects and they begin to from two and three word utterances (Levine & Munsch, 2010). The third stage is called “Language Development of Pre-schoolers”, this is when three year olds begin to use multiword sentences with morphemes, creating more sophisticated sentence structures. This is the stage when children begin to develop written language and phonological awareness (Levine & Munsch, 2010).  

NUMERACY
Young children have a desire to make sense of the world around them, they are “Active, resourceful individuals who can construct, modify and integrate ideas by interacting with the physical world and with peers and adults” (Foundations for Numeracy: An Evidence-based Toolkit for Early Learning Practitioners, 2010, p.12). One way children make sense of the world around them is through numeracy. Some of the key concepts of mathematical understanding include, numbers, geometry, measurement, patterns, reasoning and probability. In the article there was these resource sheets, which I thought could be useful when developing my numeracy continuum.

Now What?

From my readings I have gained a better understanding on some of the developmental stages and milestones of young children's literacy and numeracy, which I hope to use when developing my own continuum. In my continuum I will not use specific ages as children's development happens at all different rates. 

References

Foundations for Numeracy: An Evidence-based Toolkit for Early Learning Practitioners. (2010). Canadian Child Care Federation and Canadian Language and Literacy Research Network.

Levine, L, E., & Munsch, J. (2010) Child Development: An Active Learning Approach, p. 299 – 337. Sage Publications.