Friday, April 12, 2013

Play, Approximation and Rote Learning

Once long ago, okay about 3½ years ago, I spoke to a parent who was bragging about her daughter being able to count. The daughtifully would dutifully recite her 1,2,3s and earn beaming smiles and coos of adoration... but she had no idea what numbers were. It was cute, but I was not as impressed as I was "supposed" to be.

My son is 3¼ (because until you are at least 6 years old, every one of those quarters matter!) and he likes letters and numbers... He can pick out an S, and A, an M, and a K. A few days ago his baby sister was chewing on a fridge magnet (as you do?) and he grabbed it off her because she was chewing on his "S"... and he found her an M to chew on instead... he's always liked things to correspond. He likes the circle shape of O but he seldom remembers its name, and he likes that Z is in "Buzz Lightyear". With my kids' literacy I have never particularly been hung up on them learning alphabetical order. Phonetics and visual recognition of "sight words" seemed more important to me. What do you use alphabetising for in reading? Not a lot. It's much more useful for doing things like navigating an index.

My older son is 5½ and he has been using literacy programs on the computer. Some of them sing alphabet songs of various sorts. Some have exercises where you have to input "2 letters before X"... for some reason. I got him a laminated card with the alphabet to aid him with such problems and he's become pretty good at counting forward and backward through the alphabet, he now knows the "directionality" - that you read it from left to right, and start a new line on the left when you run out of letters, and he has set himself the challenge of learning the alphabet song. When he asked me how he was doing I had to honestly break it to him that he was habitually missing out J. The other day he was in his room quietly singing to himself and then he hollered out to me "MUMMY!! I REMEMBERED J!!!".

My younger son loves to watch his brother. He loves to do what he can do. Recently this has meant learning how to do his own car seatbelt... and trying to learn the alphabet song. When little ones start to learn everything is guesses. It's approximating what you experience around you, trying it yourself, seeing what works and what doesn't. S. has been "counting" for a while now. It normally goes "1, 2, 3, 4, 3, 1, 4, 3, 4, 3.... 4!!" Lately he has a new favourite number which he can recognise the numeral for. "1, 6, 3, 4, 6, 1, 3, 6, 4, 6!" Adding to his knowledge of counting S. is trying to ... count? the letters by alphabet. He will point to letters on the cover of a book and start at "A, B, C..." Today he got very excited and a little confused as he pointed to all the letters, reading "A, B, C, F, G, T, U, V, W, U, V, Q, R, Z, 6, 23, Z!!"

There is a place for rote learning, but teaching a child their 123 or abc, does not make them suddenly comprehend the meaning. Using these ideas and playing with them is what gives us insights into these things. Today my son was in the sandpit and I drew a squiggle in the sand. "S!" he labels correctly and then he kneels down next to me and draws a mirror image of my squiggle "S!" he yells again. His approximation is close enough for me, and I smile. Today my son made a recognisable mark, for his own message. He started playing with the form of language, and making it for himself. Nobody told him to... he just copied what he sees around him on a daily basis. A few weeks ago he took magnetic letters off the fridge and made BZZ. I am told this spells "Buzz Lightyear!". These are the experiences through which my children gain their literacy.

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