Anthony Semann: Hi, I'm Anthony Semann and I am really pleased to have join me, Dr. Alma Fleet. Welcome, Alma.
Dr. Alma Fleet: Thank you very much. Pleasure to be here.
Anthony Semann: Alma Fleet is an author, consultant and researcher, and she has worked in this space for quite a while, thinking about communication and in the Victorian Early Years Learning and Development Framework, or the VEYLDF, communication is one of the outcomes. It views children as wanting to communicate their ideas, their theories and their perspectives with us. Alma, could you share with me what a language rich environment in a three-year-old kindergarten might look like?
Dr. Alma Fleet: Such an exciting space. For a start, people will also want to look at what Wendy Shepherd has to say about environments, because that's applicable everywhere. But then I'd like us to be thinking about the availability of resources, all kinds. So things can be hard, they can be soft, they can be natural. And to think then what the children are likely to be doing with them, because we would like things to be open ended to encourage language. The youngest ones will be mouthing, no problem. The older ones, or the ones who are more articulate, might be doing rocket ships. Fine.
Dr. Alma Fleet: And in addition to that, books. Sometimes people forget the library. Little ones love books, particularly non-fiction. If there's a couch available, so much the better. Cushions are nice. Think about inviting environments, inviting children into literacy.
Anthony Semann: So literacy, you would say, is a really core component of the way in which we allow children to communicate and be in a language rich environment.
Dr. Alma Fleet: Exactly. And I think there's a misunderstanding there because a lot of our world has become too narrow and literacy is defined too narrowly. But if we go back to the VEYLDF, it's broad. It includes drama, it includes movement. Magic can fit anywhere in the environment whenever children have something interesting to talk about. They are into literacy because oral language leads to written language. You can't write or read something unless you know the words, so you need to have something interesting to talk about.
Anthony Semann: So, Alma, how might educators and teachers use communication to support numeracy learning in a three-year-old kindergarten program.
Dr. Alma Fleet: Aha. What jumps out at you is cooking. Cooking is the ideal way in because you're going to be weighing. You're going to be measuring. You're going to be counting. You're going to have some kind of visual recipe so that you're getting your intersections of literacy and numeracy. You automatically have engagement because everybody's desperate to get involved. So you're going to throw in your other associated skills to do with collaboration and problem solving and sharing. But that numeracy language needs to be used and not just implied.
Dr. Alma Fleet: And that's also true with blocks. Anything to do with building; blocks, LEGO, any kind of construction work is going to immediately bring STEM into the picture because we're going to have engineering, we're going to have mathematical language, we're going to have taller, we're going to have shorter, wider, narrower. If the adult models the language. Otherwise, the construction takes place silently, which is fine in the child's head but it doesn't do us any good for oral language development.
Anthony Semann: So really what I'm hearing here is that the adults play a critical role in the learning of numeracy, by the way in which they engage with children.
Dr. Alma Fleet: Exactly. And it's not laissez faire. I think people worry about being too controlling. I think what has to happen is a scaffold where the children feel safe and they know what's expected. There are some limits. Some behaviours need to be monitored, but it's not heavily controlled. There are open ended possibilities where the adult is offering provocations, ideas to extend and some words to label things. We're not actually good at that. I had one colleague up north who went around really the play area and she put cards up with words that staff could be reminded to use to encourage children to be thinking mathematically in their play.
Anthony Semann: Alma, so the reality is that some educators and teachers might lack some confidence and others may have more confidence when it comes to working with literacy and numeracy. What practical ideas can you share to build the confidence of educators to work with literacy and numeracy with a three-year-old kindergarten program?
Dr. Alma Fleet: We're well-placed in this sector because your best ally is a colleague. Buddy up with somebody who knows what they're doing so that you can be sharing ideas about how to see this way of working in everyday play and practice so that you can help somebody else's eyes help you see that in the sandpit literacy and numeracy are evolving. If there is talk, if you are scaffolding, if the children are engaged and that will all be happening there. And what goes along with that is re-looking at your own language, because adult speech becomes important here usually, and I'm terrible at this.
Dr. Alma Fleet: We need to slow down and enunciate. Repeat back to children, so they're getting a clear message about what they're trying to communicate if their language is just evolving, and the tricky bit of using statements more often than questions or commands. And sometimes that has to be role played in front of a mirror. But talking with a colleague always helps.
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