Portfolio Page 1.1

Outcome 1.1 – Clearly describes how the concepts are connected to & supported by social relationships & concepts

In my literacy and numeracy for birth – 4 class at university, we looked at several YouTube videos of children participating in literacy and numeracy experiences. In one of the videos there were a girl and her younger brother building with blocks. From watching this video, I was able to see how different literacy and numeracy concepts were connected to and supported by social relationships and contexts as the older girl was helping her younger brother to be able to balance the blocks on top of one another without falling. From watching this video I was able to be more aware of these types of experiences that children take part in the kindergarten that I was doing my placement at for this year.

    (The video that we watched in class with the brother and sister building with blocks)

On my placement a couple of weeks ago, the teachers were helping to challenge the children’s thinking and getting them to build with different shaped foam blocks. The children had to figure out how they could build a tower without making it fall over and to do this they had to problem solve.

Throughout the day, the children took part in building with the blocks, I observed one boy, whom I will name Joe for confidential reasons, who was able to figure out how to build a tower with the blocks without having it fall over. He then wanted to teach his twin brother, whom I will name Peter, how to build a tower as well using the processes that he used.

To start off, they both gathered many different shaped blocks to build their tower. Joe then started showing Peter how to build the base of the tower to make it strong. Joe started putting the rectangle blocks together to make a big square shape. Joe was telling Peter that if they put more blocks together at the base then the tower will be strong. Throughout the whole time that they were building the tower, they were communicating and cooperating to be able to build together. Peter then started building on top of the base that Joe had made and he had to use problem solving skills to be able to figure out how to create the next layers of the tower without it falling over. They both used trial and error to be able to figure out how big or small the layers had to be to be able to keep them strong so they wouldn’t fall over. When they made the tower smaller the blocks would fall off eventually so they decided to make the layers of the tower big like the base so they would stay strong. I found it really incredible to see what they were doing together as they were both learning different numeracy concepts as well a literacy concepts through communication. Joe was also teaching Peter different numeracy concepts that he had already learned from when he constructed his building beforehand.

The types of concepts that they were learning and using while building together were balance as they had to figure out how to balance each block on top of the other without the blocks falling over. They were learning about different shapes as the blocks were different shapes such as triangles, squares, rectangles and cylinders. They were using problem solving skills as they were finding solutions as to how they could make the blocks balance and not fall. They were using trial and error as at times they would put on blocks that would fall off straight away due to how they placed the block, so they were learning how to place different blocks without them falling. They were learning about the placement of objects and how to place each block to keep the tower steady. They were also learning about weight and distribution as they were figuring out how where to put the blocks so that the building would stay balanced.

From this experience I was able to clearly see how concepts are connected to and supported by social relationships and contexts as both the twins were able to communicate and work together to be able to use concepts to be able to build with the blocks. I hope to use these types of learning experiences once I become a teacher as they really help children to develop different skills and then the children are able to help others to develop those skills as well.