In this experience, children share information about themselves, their family and cultural practices with their peers.
This not only provides children with language learning opportunities but is also an opportunity to celebrate the diversity of the families within the group and community.
This experience should be differentiated depending on the individual child/group level.
This learning experience plan relates to:
- interacting with others
- language and emergent literacy learner (36-60 months of age)
- learning focus: explanations and sharing information
- teaching practices: questions and investigations.
Collect information
What information has been gathered as evidence to inform this experience?
Links to VEYLDF
Outcome 4: identity
Children develop knowledgeable and confident self-identities:
- Share aspects of their culture with other children and educators.
Outcome 5: communication
Children interact verbally and non-verbally with others for a range of purposes:
- Show increasing knowledge, understanding and skill in conveying meaning.
Victorian curriculum levels F-2: literacy
- Listen to and respond orally to texts and to the communication of others in informal and structured classroom situations using interaction skills, including listening, while others speak.
- Engage in conversations and discussions, using active listening, showing interest, and contributing ideas, information and questions, taking turns and recognising the contribution of others.
Learning intentions
- For children to develop the ability to give clear explanations.
- For children to develop the ability to gain meaning from others’ explanations.
Assessment of learning
Learning is demonstrated when children:
- explain important aspects of their family and culture in a way that can mostly be understood. For example, “This is a photo of my family. It’s Chinese New Year!”
- respond to questions from peers and provide clarifications as appropriate. For example, “ No, Dad speaks Urdu and Mum speaks Mandarin”
- demonstrate understanding by making comments or posing relevant questions in response to what they’ve heard. For example, “Why do you wear that?”
Resources
- One-to-three large cardboard boxes (children can decorate collaboratively as they choose). The number of boxes depends on the size of the group of children, days of attendance and how long the experience maintains children’s interest. For example, for a group of 22 children attending three days per week, educators may send out two boxes at any one time and have this experience span over 11 weeks.
- Information sheet for parents outlining the experience and what can be shared from home. This could be sent via email or usual communication channels.
- Three-to-five items chosen from each child’s home to reflect their cultural identity (parents/carers to assist with this at home).
Group size(s)
Medium sized group or small group (two-to-five children).
Differentiation
Differentiation should be based on prior assessment of the child/children’s communication skills. Examples of differentiation:
- For a child who is new to learning English, the educator and parent can identify and pre-teach associated vocabulary. This will allow the child to experience success with labelling the items in the box and perhaps sharing simple explanations, e.g. functions. The educator can ‘rehearse’ the sharing before joining the group to give the child confidence in talking about their items.
- For a child who has a strong ability to explain and share information with peers, the educator may focus on asking more complex questions, e.g. “Why do you make the moon cakes?” and encourage the child to pose more complex questions to others.
Experience process
- Clearly articulate the learning intention:
- explain to the children that they can share with the group about their family and culture. Outline how in doing this, they will develop skills in providing explanations and listening to/learning from their peers.
- show children the box and explain that they will have turns to take the box home, talk to their families about their language/culture/religious practices and add relevant items to the box that they can share with the group.
- talk to the children about some of the important skills to use when sharing information/explaining to others, e.g. voice projection and eye contact. Record these on a poster and display it in the room as a reminder for the children.
- Commence the sharing process:
- as the educator, take the first turn to share with the children providing a model of the structure and the skills in focus.
- model effective communication practices (as above).
- encourage the children to ask questions either throughout or at the end. Model appropriate ways to respond to questions/comments.
- discuss with the children what made it easy or difficult to understand explanation, e.g. “so when I looked at you all and smiled, that helped you to understand what I said….”
- discuss with the children who would like to take the box/boxes home and plan the regular sharing time with the group.
- support each child to share with the group as appropriate. The following strategies may be useful:
- expand on what the child has said to clarify as well as model more advanced vocabulary and language structures.
- model appropriate questions in response to each child’s explanations, e.g. “Where do you celebrate Eid?”
- if a child speaks using speech or grammatical errors, repeat their utterances using the appropriate forms for children to hear. E.g. Child: “Nonno taked me there” Educator: “Nonno took you to the party.”
- fill in the blanks as required to ensure the ‘audience’ are given relevant context and details required. E.g. “So your family are Muslim and celebrate what is called Eid.”
- explain new vocabulary to children and make links to objects, real life or previous experiences where possible.
- repeat and revisit new vocabulary and have children explain these to the group on other occasions and as relevant.
- To consolidate and assess understanding, encourage the children to share about each other based on what they have learned through this process. This can be done in group times, through drawing, as relevant throughout the day and/or at home with their families.
Going further
Record what children say about one another to display in the room and encourage children to add to/revisit this over time (i.e. environmental print). For example, this display could be in the form of a community tree using photos of each child with relevant text about themselves under each picture.
Reflect and review
Reflective questions for educators may include:
- What learning has occurred? How do you know?
- What have you realised about the child’s interests, knowledge, and capabilities?
- In discussion with colleagues, what would you plan next to consolidate or extend children’s learning?
Alternate resources for this learning experience
- I’m Australian too by Mem Fox
- Whoever you are by Mem Fox
Related learning experience plans and videos
Literacy teaching toolkit experience plans
Example learning experience plans for educators.
Literacy teaching toolkit videos
Watch educators demonstrate teaching practices.
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