The Significance of Inclusion in the Preschool Literacy Environment
Ensuring a Proper And Supportive Environment in the Preschool is an important aspect of literacy in early childhood. According to Guo et al.(2012), both physical and psychological environment impacts the early learning of children significantly. The physical environment implies the classroom settings, literacy resources, and materials, and the psychological environment implies the learning-related interaction between teachers and students as well as among students.
The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the early learning settings of a preschool area in a daycare service organization. This early learning center is located in the suburb area of Mosman, New South Wales. This particular early childhood learning center is a not-for-profit organization that is currently operating from Monday to Friday from 7 AM to 6 PM. This center provides care and learning benefits to children and toddlers of age range 6 months to 5 years. The core philosophy of this organization includes the concept of inclusion as it can be seen that the staff and families associated with this organization are from various income and sociological backgrounds, religions, and nations. There are presently 35-40 students to be attended per day in this center. This report describes the results of completing a Preschool Literacy Environment Checklist and also includes suggestions that should be considered by the Long Daycare center authority for the betterment of the environment of that center.
Strengths:
- Arif, & Hashim (2008) did a case study that showed that even a nonreader child is more likely to comprehend the meaning of the pictures in wordless picture books and thus concluded that picture books help a lot in the early learning of a child. Books with mostly pictures and fewer words as well as wordless picture books are available in this room at a specific rack kept in the corner accompanied by a low-height table and mats scattered on the floor.
- According to Yogman et al (2018), the caregivers, and family members should give enough importance to imaginative play for an inclusive mind development of the children. Dollhouses, dresses, and props for children as well as for their toys are provided to the children to support the practice of Imaginative play and to depict the characters during the storytelling sessions.
Weaknesses:
- Different areas for different activities are not distinguishable other than the reading area.
- According to Gottfried et al (2015), the print environment in school as well as home is important part of literacy in early childhood. However, in this long daycare center, not enough environmental print is available in the classroom or the play area.
Strengths:
- Various types of writing utensils such as pencils, erasers, wooden letters, crayons, textas, colored pencils, and most importantly blackboards and whiteboards, copies, and small blackboards are available in this room and children can choose the utensils as per their preferences.
- According to Smith, & Pellegrini (2008), object play can help children to explore different combinations of activities, develop problem-solving capabilities as well as feel the pressure of external problems. Object Play is supported in this center with the provision of building blocks, toy cars, dolls, and jigsaw puzzles. These objects are also used during the time of storytelling practices.
- According to Plowman, McPake, & Stephen (2012), digital devices create new opportunities for early learning. Digital learning equipment is also available in this center which is sometimes used during the storytelling sessions.
Weaknesses:
- Educators don’t change the books on shelves as frequently as they are required to do so by borrowing from the library or by interchanging books among the different classes.
Strengths:
- According to Robson (2016), educators should listen to the experiences of children. A different time is fixed to interact with children.
- Each day a fixed time is set for doing different activities. In that class, each student is encouraged to do the things they like. This class is usually taken after taking a storytelling session so that the impression of the storytelling on children’s learning can be understood.
- A different time is allocated for storytelling classes and in that class, children are allowed to access digital devices when it’s necessary.
Weaknesses:
- Students are not taken on the trips to show applications of different theoretically learned concepts.
- Dictation of stories by the children is not a part of the curriculum of this center rather they are encouraged to read aloud for improving their speaking skills.
- No time is fixed for accessing digital devices.
Strengths:
- According to Isbell, (2002), reading aloud and storytelling can be considered effective ways to connect with and share literature with children. Through storytelling, the teacher can help the children to increase the speed of expressive language development. Storytelling is important as the language used in this is usually the informal language that is easy to understand for children. Each day a productive storytelling session is taken by the teachers through which important information is provided to the students in the form of a story. Sometimes children are also given scope to read aloud a part of the story which helps them in developing language proficiency.
- Teachers’ daily interaction with the children helps to build a good teacher-student bond which is helpful in the inclusive development of children. Through effective interaction with the teachers and among peers, new vocabulary and concepts can be introduced which helps children to develop their speaking and communication skills (Hamre, 2014). The educators in this center engage in effective interactions with the children by asking questions to them and encouraging them to tell a story or share some experiences. Children are regularly asked to form at least one sentence with a newly learned word and share it with peers and the educator.
- The children are encouraged to participate in various activities such as drawing (as they like it), building something with the help of clay or blocks, singing, telling stories, reciting a poem, to dance as per their preferences.
Weaknesses:
- Educators don’t point out the important features of a book such as the front page, back page, author, and Title.
- Children are not engaged in games and activities that help them to improve their speaking abilities by breaking spoken words according to syllables.
- Children are not encouraged to write for communicating with peers on a regular basis.
- This center welcomes children and families from different nations. However, the educators and other staff in this center do not represent the culture and languages of all children through various activities such as reading books and introducing new words, rhymes, and songs.
After assessing the literacy learning environment of the preschool facility provided by a daycare center, the areas with further opportunities for improvement have been addressed and some suggestions have been provided to guide the authority to do improvement in those areas.
- According to Gray, & Palaiologou (Eds.)(2019), the use of digital devices can be helpful in generating effective learning for early learners.
- According to Arthur et al (2017), educators should incorporate different languages, cultures, and traditions within the curriculum of the learning program. Inclusion of different cultures, and languages within the curriculum of the literacy setting demonstrates respect towards people with different backgrounds, speaking different languages, and thus helps the children in learning the concept of diversity and inclusion. This also helps the bilingual children to strengthen the base of their home language.
- According to Graves (2019), writing helps in the development of composing skills, letter reading abilities as well as decoding, comprehension of reading materials, and reduction of errors in spelling.
In the circumstances when field trips are not a viable option for learning, the educators can use videos and audio to teach the children about the various application of theoretically learned concepts such as showing road signs, showing videos of animals, places, streets, and many more.
Conclusion
According to Beecher et al (2017), a person can become a skilled reader only if the learning process in his/her childhood starts in the proper place. However, studies have found that many kindergarten and preschool facilities or long daycares lack an optimal supportive environment. Thus, doing a literacy environment checklist is important to identify the areas of development. The aim of this paper was to discuss the early learning environment of a preschool facility provided by a long daycare center in Australia. To serve this purpose the learning environment checklist has been presented both in descriptive and in a quadrant format. In that checklist, the essential activities and availability of mandatory equipment and systems in the preschool room are analyzed. After finding out the outcome of the learning environment checklist, the recommendations have been presented based on the earlier research and learning theories. Thus the report concludes by revealing the early learning environment of the preschool area and by providing important insights which can be helpful in improvement of the early childhood learning settings or environment of that long daycare center.
References
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