Teaching Early Years Mathematics, Science and ICT

Core concepts and practice for the first three years of schooling

Chris Campbell, Geoff Hilton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000247664
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Elementary Education

When young children first arrive at school, they generally know how to use a mobile phone and a tablet, and how to count, share and measure. They have a sense of wonder about the world around them. They expect to further interact with technology and to build and extend their mathematics and science knowledge. Teaching Early Years Mathematics, Science and ICT shows how teachers of children in their first three years of formal schooling can guide students in developing a sound understanding of the key concepts in mathematics and science in classroom and field activities. It shows how to select appropriate educational technology, and effectively and routinely integrate it into the learning experience, as part of students' wider classroom learning.Throughout, the authors make connections between children's out-of-school and in-school experiences, as well as connections across key learning areas. They provide real classroom examples of learning experiences which can be adapted for different year levels. A reflection template assists teachers in planning and successfully implementing teaching strategies to meet curriculum requirements. Teaching Early Years Mathematics, Science and ICT helps teachers bridge theory and practice in teaching children aged 5 to 8 years.

Teaching young children in the first three years of schooling

The first day of school

The first day of formal school is a highly emotional experience for children, and often for their parents. School is a place of high expectations, of meeting new friends, of playing in new environments, of using brand new pencils and other new equipment, and of becoming familiar with the routine of the day. There have often been weeks of preparation for school, resulting in a mounting sense of excitement and perhaps anxiety. On the first day of school, most young children arrive with expectations of learning—of becoming ‘smart’. They have lofty career aspirations of becoming astronauts, doctors, firemen, palaeontologists, zookeepers, ballerinas or rock stars. They are brimming with a desire to learn. They look to the teacher to provide this.

When they begin formal schooling, many young children are ICT savvy. They know how to use a mobile phone and an iPad, how to scroll through screens to find their favourite game or app. They sometimes know how to count and share and measure. They have a sense of wonder and inquiry about the world around them. When young children come to school, they are poised to interact with technology to build and extend their mathematics and science knowledge.

The purpose of this chapter is to focus on some of the important aspects of teaching and learning that teachers need to consider in their daily work with young minds. This chapter overviews teaching strategies, questioning techniques, assessment strategies and curriculum integration, all of which are important regardless of the curriculum area in which a teacher works. These ideas are revisited and extended in more detail in each of the chapters on teaching science (Chapters 3 to 8) and teaching mathematics (Chapters 9 to 13).

Teaching strategies

There are many effective teaching strategies and learning environments that teachers can utilise when working with young learners. A central consideration that should be at the heart of teachers’ decisions is how they can come to know, and capitalise and build upon, children’s prior knowledge and their experiences beyond school. This constructivist approach not only allows children to make connections and construct their own knowledge; it also makes learning more authentic and relevant to the children.

According to Ausubel (1968), what a learner already knows has a significant impact on their future learning. The challenge for teachers is to elicit children’s prior understandings. This can be done using many and varied strategies—for example, questioning, looking at children’s drawings or making observations of children role-playing or using puppets to discuss their ideas (Campbell & Jobling 2012).

When planning to develop and build on children’s understanding in any subject, the teacher should use as many varied and appropriate learning approaches and environments as possible. Play-based learning is a very important element of teaching and learning in the early years of school. It capitalises on children’s natural skills and interests, as well as their instincts and questioning to learn. Play-based learning environments for mathematics are elaborated in Chapter 9, with detailed learning experiences to build and extend mathematical thinking given.

Using a play-based learning approach is not the only teaching strategy for the early years of school. The approaches adopted often depend on the nature of the learning and the concepts involved. For example, guided discovery or inquiry learning may be more appropriate than play-based activities for developing children’s science understanding of certain topics. Further, school-based events provide rich contexts for learning. The teacher’s role is to draw upon the context of the school to create rich learning experiences. For example, the school may be located by the sea, near a rainforest or in bushland; it may have a creek running beside it, or be located in the middle of a busy city centre. The school’s surroundings provide immediate access to a plethora of resources and contexts for making learning more meaningful. Similarly, events such as sports day, the swimming carnival, the visiting circus and the dental van can become the focus for learning. Many schools have kitchen gardens that are part of a whole-school enterprise. The kitchen garden provides opportunities for learning both science and mathematics, which are only limited by a teacher’s imagination and creativity. Specific teaching ideas and suggestions for developing young children’s mathematics knowledge are presented in Chapter 9, with links to science in relation to hypothesising, experimenting, recording and analysing data, and drawing conclusions.

Not all valuable and important learning experiences are achievable through play-based discovery or inquiry activities. Sometimes, teacher-directed activities will be needed to scaffold the children’s learning. While play-based, discovery, active or hands-on learning activities are integral to facilitating children’s learning in the early grades, it is reasonable to expect that children will sometimes sit quietly and listen to you, the teacher and/or each other. It is important to remember that children’s learning experiences need to be diverse, and for this reason it is not sufficient for a teacher to rely exclusively on direct instruction; however, we do our children no favours by not expecting that they will develop the skills of quiet observation and respectful listening.

Questioning

Much has been written about questioning, and we consider questioning to be one of the most important skills of an effective teacher. Questioning allows teachers to establish what children already know. It is an effective means of formatively assessing children’s understanding on an ongoing basis. In addition, questioning can be used as an effective means of scaffolding children’s learning, and it can prompt children’s reasoning and extend their thinking. It takes time, effort and practice on the part of the teacher to develop good questioning skills and techniques. Questioning approaches can appear to be teacher-centred, however, the effective use of questioning, for example, hypothetical questioning or open-ended questions that prompt children to explore ideas or make tentative suggestions can create a child-centred learning situation (Department of Education and Training 2003).

Campbell and Jobling (2012) described the purposes of effective questioning in early years classrooms. These include:

• creating stimuli or impetus for exploration or investigation
• making predictions or hypothesising
• identifying existing knowledge and alternative conceptions
• promoting reasoning and argumentation
• encouraging discussion and problem-solving
• scaffolding thinking
• making observations.

They emphasise that the teacher need not always initiate the questions. Children can also generate many important and thought-provoking questions.

We encourage readers to explore online resources that are designed to support teachers in identifying and using effective questioning—see, for example, Jamie Mackenzie’s questioning toolkit for teachers (Mackenzie 1997). Elaborations of questioning to extend children’s thinking, reasoning and vocabulary specifically in relation to science and mathematics have been provided throughout the chapters, with examples given of teacher actions and learner experiences.

Assessment

Assessing learning in the first three years of schooling can be a complex task. It is, of course, important to determine what the child has learned through the experiences that have been facilitated. The type of evidence the teacher collects to determine a child’s learning of a particular topic varies greatly, depending on the age of the child, their ability level, the topic, the concept or skill, the type of learning strategy engaged and the requirements of the education system. This means that one single assessment of a child’s learning does not provide sufficient evidence upon which to draw conclusions about the child’s learning. Teachers must collect data on children’s learning from a variety of sources and using a variety of tools. Good assessment techniques also inform further teaching. Some possible assessment methods include the following.

Annotations

Teacher annotations in a journal of children’s actions, behaviours and responses during activities can be a powerful means of informal, ongoing assessment, and can be applied to many of the activities described in all chapters of this book. Annotations cannot be completed for all children all the time, but a regular recording of these attributes will develop a clear picture over time. Try to record what the child can do and not what they cannot do. It is also necessary to give a clear context for the annotations so that in future the full meaning can be retained. Annotations can be made while children are participating in activities or responding to questions in group discussions (particularly open-ended questions).

Checklists

Similar to annotations, checklists can be a quicker method of recording a child’s learning, but considerable thought is needed to predetermine the learning attributes on the list. In mathematics, for example, checklists can be constructed to monitor children’s problem-solving and hence metacognitive skills. The four general stages of problem-solving—read and understand; make a plan; carry out the plan; and check reasonableness—with ratings of with help/without help can provide a teacher with a quick assessment as children undertake problem-solving tasks and inform planning for teaching. Similarly in science, checklists can be used to monitor children’s acquisition of inquiry or questioning skills. Checklists are useful tools for tracking the development of children’s ICT skills. In all subjects, checklists can be valuable for assessing children’s social skills for group work, with such criteria as listens attentively, interrupts politely, takes turns, and values others suggestions providing key data for monitoring children’s learning processes.

Written responses

For children who have advanced to be independent writers, much of their written work can be used for assessment. Written work can be viewed to determine a child’s observations, predictions, descriptions, knowledge of important facts or language, and their conclusions or opinions. For children who are not yet writing, the teacher or class helper can transcribe their ideas as the children explain their thinking. Children should always be encouraged to reflect upon their learning experiences. Providing children with time to explain and describe their thinking processes sends important messages to students about the nature of the subject and what the teacher values about the subject.

Specific assessment tasks

The teacher may choose (where they deem it appropriate or necessary) to ask children to complete...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• About the authors
• Introduction
• 1 Teaching young children in the first three years of schooling
• 2 Information and communication technology in the first three years of schooling
• 3 Science in the first three years of schooling
• 4 Biological science
• 5 Chemical science
• 6 Earth and space science
• 7 Physical science
• 8 Making ICT integral to a science lesson sequence: Biology
• 9 Mathematics in the first three years of schooling
• 10 Number and Algebra
• 11 Statistics and Probability
• 12 Geometry and Measurement
• 13 Making ICT integral to mathematics: Time
• A final note
• References
• Index