Part 4: Video 1 Reflections and Discussion

Part 4: Video 1 Reflections and Discussion

Caroline; I love that video because you really get a sense of the children achieving their ‘I got it’ moment at the end – it’s fantastic.

I’m going to ask you to speak to the person sitting next to you and reflect on whether you perhaps saw more mathematical thinking the second time around in that video, but before we do that I also wanted to point out something – and video does give you 20-20 hindsight – how as the children came back into the room, you could see that the educator had been having another conversation with the children that had stayed behind, and how this learning experience had facilitated differentiated teaching so the educator was able to target some particular and specific support for the child who needed to go outside and have a look at where the rock pit was, but with the children who remained behind and who were already able to identify where it was on the map, other conversations were taking place as well. I’ll leave that with you for a couple of minutes while you are speaking to the person sitting next to you, to reflect on whether you saw more because you had a stinger sense of what it was that you were looking for.

I can see that some people are having quite animated conversations, and other people seem to have finished the conversation. So let’s move – I’m conscious of time as well.

What I wanted to draw your attention to, just very briefly - and you’ll have to take my word for it as I’m not going to flip back through the slides – is if we think as well about – let me rephrase that – if we think about the learning that we see children demonstrate in this video and then align it with the slide that showed the VEYLDF progression on into the Victorian Curriculum F-10, we see there that at the foundation level, children are describing position and movement, in the curriculum. At level 1 we see that children ‘give and follow directions to familiar locations, and at Level 2 we see that children interpret simple maps of familiar locations and identify the relative position of key features. So I’d like to draw your attention to the fact that if we were going to be using one of those two guiding documents to support our analysis of what we saw happening there, we are actually seeing some children who are demonstrating understanding at a Level 2 in the curriculum, which may well be exceeding – and I hear this quite often – may well be exceeding what our expectations might be in a preschool space. And this is one of the reasons why we have been working on this project with the VCAA, because we know,and you know, that all children develop at their own pace and some areas of their understanding will develop more quickly than others and so what are we going to do about it? So we really need to see the continuum of learning not as some sort of theoretical idea, but an actual practical thing that we need to be resourcing our own ability to support those children and that may mean if you work in primary that you need to go back and have a look at the Victorian early years Learning and Development Framework. If you work in the years before school, it might mean that in some areas, you need to go and have a look at the curriculum and see what’s happening. S it means we are moving away from the idea that we only use the VEYLDF in preschool and we only use the Victorian Curriculum F-10 when we are in school, and actually look at how they speak to each other. Mary’s going to speak to you towards the end of this presentation about some of the work that’s being done to map that continuum as well, which we think you’ll find quite exciting and really helpful.

Start Slide 11

Discussion – did sharpening your lens change what you noticed?

End Slide 11

Moving swiftly on, did sharpening your lens change what you noticed? Perhaps nod so we can see – yes, so I’m seeing there and on the screen we are seeing some people nodding as well. So what that means as an implication for practice is that we need ourselves to take ownership of that fact that we need to be resourcing our own learning in order to equip ourselves to see what children are demonstrating.

Start Slide 12

Make the most of everyday opportunities!

We need to build on children’s informal mathematics knowledge and value how children use mathematics in their everyday lives (Copley, 1999, p. 34).

This means being attuned to what children make, say and do in order to capitalise on relevant, authentic opportunities for learning.

Not necessarily just following the child’s lead –we don’t know what we don’t know

End Slide 12

We need to build on children’s informal maths knowledge and value how children use maths in their everyday lives. And that sort of aligns with the PISA [Programme for International Student Assessment]definition of what mathematical numeracy is. These are skills and competencies that help us to be successful in our day-to-day lives – children as well.

This means that we need to be attuned to what children make, say and do in order to capitalise on relevant, authentic opportunities for learning. if we are attuned to what it is children are learning, making, saying or doing, and we see the maths in that, we are able to mathematise that, support children in consolidating that understanding, and then extend their thinking and their learning a little bit further.

Sometimes it means not just following the child’s lead. Sometimes, as professionals, we need to go in and, knowing what it is we are working towards with children, actually intentionally set out to teach them something specific that we know is important. It might be the language for particular ideas; it might be the ideas themselves.

Start Slide 13

Watch another video

Watch with your sharpened focus. Look for attention being paid to:

Defining attributes of objects and shapes
Positional and directional language
Spatial relationships
Visualisation and spatial reasoning
Perseverance and problem-solving

End Slide 13

So what I’m going to do know is show you a completely different video, and one that all early childhood educators will relate to. This is a good moment to acknowledge the incredible generosity of this educator and the team of teachers in the room for allowing me in with a video camera, because we all know how scary that can feel to have somebody follow us around with a camera. But again, we wanted authentic early childhood contexts to support you in recognising the mathematical thinking. So we’d like you to look out for references to defining attributes of objects and shapes – so a red triangle isn’t a triangle because it’s red, it’s a triangle because the defining attributes of the shape – the tree sides, for example – make it a triangle. Look for positional and directional language, look for references to spatial relationships. Look for visualisation and spatial reasoning, and look for perseverance and problem-solving on the part of the educator and on the part of the children.

Start Slide 14

Video 2

The educator and children are sitting around a low table with a construction of wooden blocks and coloured glass shapes and other objects. The educator has slips of paper with objects on them, and is asking the children to put them in particular places, for example, ‘The computer needs to go in between the red and yellow windows, please’. He asks one of the children to ‘bury the box of toys under the tree’, which causes great excitement.

End Slide 14

I’m going to replay that to give you a clue – but have a chat to the person sitting next to you about the examples of those elements of spatial talk that you saw happening in that video.

End of Part 4