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CONTRIBUTORS
The image of the child through a language rich environment
This month, in our ongoing collaboration with Edge Hill University curated by ALICIA BLANCO-BAYO, Early Years Lecturer and WTEY Programme Leader at the University’s Faculty of Education, we’re delighted to hear from Edge Hill Lecturer SHAMIM ASHRAF.
As a staff team of practitioners, working with 2-4-year-old children, we developed our ‘Image of the Child ‘(Loris Malaguzzi revisited by Carlina Rinaldi 2006, p.83). These are a set of six statements which practitioners, school governors and parents discussed and agreed and were based on values, cultures, traditions and beliefs. The school reflected the community and both staff and children were mainly of South Asian heritage. There are five main community languages spoken in addition to English which was the second language. For our nursery school setting, the team set about exploring the notion of a ‘language rich environment’. This was to maximise opportunities for the children in the setting, the majority of whom were at the early stages of second language acquisition. The practitioners began by using the Mosaic Approach (Clark, Alison and Moss, 2011). The children’s voice (in any language) directly contributed to any changes that the staff were to make. A curriculum intended to fully maximise the opportunities for talk
across all areas of learning was in place and the environment was to be reviewed to provide further opportunities to develop and extend language, using a careful balance of adult-led and child-led learning. Each area of continuous provision was discussed in light of the Image of the Child statements and the Characteristics of Effective Teaching and Learning. Key questions facilitated by leaders were used to develop the practitioner knowledge and understanding of how children learn language. For example, using one of the statements from the Image of the Child, around developing ‘independence’ in the painting area, the question which practitioners discussed was; “how can the children mix their own colours if all the colours are already provided?” and, “if we were to provide only primary colours, would this encourage the children to mix their own secondary colours?”. If children are to learn to mix primary colours, then a carefully planned curriculum can help them learn how to do this. Further exploration and peer to peer conversation will provide the means to test this out and use specific vocabulary which can be introduced during that activity. The adult’s role was crucial in supporting and extending language development in mother tongue and in English. The children were taught this skill during adult led experiences too. Further opportunities to practise and develop this skill took place in continuous provision. Observations of children and the use of their language was recorded in their Learning Journeys and showed children using instructional language, and peer to peer conversations about what they were doing and how. Each area was developed using similar questions and conversations.
The Malleable Area provided ready-made play dough for the children to use. After reviewing this process, it was decided that providing the ingredients as well as visual and written instructions would help children think for themselves and they might as a result make their own play- dough. Taught initially as a skill, the children quickly became autonomous and competent at following the instructions to make the dough. This not only promoted independence, but offered opportunities to develop language skills (Dickinson, 2011). The use of ‘Helicopter Stories’, Story circles, Talking and Thinking Floor Books further contributed to the ‘buzz’ in the air that was often commented on by visitors to the school. Children modelling telling a story, provided both motivation and encouragement to other children. Whether Story telling in home language or English, acting it out or re - telling a story that the adult can scribe, provided meaningful ways for children to develop high quality language.
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Handy homework options
In her regular column this month, STEMtastic! founder KIRSTY BERTENSHAW offers some handy tips to help make homework less of a chore.
Homework undoubtedly extends the learning opportunity but can become monotonous and humdrum for both students and staff. Homework has to be set with purpose and offer valuable learning opportunities, but it is easy to run out of ideas when dealing with several classes each term. Here are a few creative homework ideas to try. For teenagers entrenched in the world of social media, students could demonstrate a concept, explain terminology, or describe learned facts by making a Tik Tok or YouTube-style video. These can be created individually or in groups. One benefit is that anyone who is shy can use the filters to hide their faces while still taking part. Students can make their own quizzes using quiz sites and apps, as well
as completing quizzes produced by teachers. These can be revision quizzes or plenaries, including pictures or definitions. These quizzes can then be shared between students for revision. Alternatively, sets of quiz cards can be produced if students prefer to do them by hand, producing games. Physical quiz cards can then be used in class revision. For longer term homework, project-based ideas can be interesting for students and provide several options depending on the students’ preferred learning styles. These could be computer-based, handwritten, presented as posters, booklets, physical models, or even documentary- style videos. Even better, cross-curricular projects can combine homework tasks across subjects. For example, exploring the solar system, students can research basic scientific facts about the planets, write descriptive pieces, music or make art, research the history of discovery and what ancient civilisations believed about the planets, as well as their role in religion. The origin of the planets’ names leads into language discussions and perhaps some Latin exploration too. To extend the learning opportunities, students could be given
homework to watch a catch-up TV documentary, or YouTube documentary, and write a short report or summary. Students should be offered the opportunity to view these at school in case they don’t have the facilities at home, perhaps making it available at lunchtime or after school one day. When learning calculations, the obvious and typical choice is a list of
sums to complete, but this is quite boring. Instead, maths mazes can be made easily online, practising functions such as dividing or multiplying. Match-up cards, triominoes or dominoes cards can be made into learning loops, where each card starts with an answer on the left and then has a question on the right. Cards have to be matched so the question on the right has the right answer on another card on the left, giving a new question to answer until it loops back round to the start. A more roundabout way of exploring a concept is to set research homework on a famous person – for example, researching the work of Sir Isaac Newton can introduce the laws of motion ready for a lesson using the laws. To really engage a class of mixed learners, try offering choice-based
homework, where students can choose one of three possible tasks. One could be writing-based, one could be more active, and one could be computer-based. One thing to be aware of is the requirements of the homework and
impact on their home circumstances. If the students need access to the internet, is there enough time for them to access it in school. Are the websites on the school approved list? If homework involves parental help, is there long enough given to work around parental shift work, and is there an alternative if there are no suitable adults available?
Kirsty is the founder of STEMtastic, an education consultancy with a focus on Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths
www.stemtastic.co.uk
April 2022
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