June 8, 2016 at 3:13 pm
Session by ECDAM on Early Numeracy Concepts with Young Children
The Early Childhood Development Association of Malta (ECDAM) invites you to a Presentation/Workshop
COUNTING ON PLAY: EXPLORING EARLY NUMERCY CONCEPTS WITH YOUNG CHILDREN
Presenter: Professor Ray Doiron from the University of Prince Edward Island, Canada.
Date: Wednesday, June 15, 2016
Venue: Gateway Building Hall E, University of Malta
Time: 6pm – 8pm
Session Description:
Early childhood education is the primary stage in the lifelong learning continuum for areas that involve cognitive development such as numeracy. However, mathematics and the process of developing numeracy skills receive little attention in early childhood education (Lee and Ginsburg, 2007; Early et.al, 2006). At the same time, training for early childhood educators tends not to emphasize numeracy, leaving them unprepared to work with young children to increase their mathematical thinking.
This session will explore the way play and playfulness support early literacy development in young children. Using play-based curriculum principles (Stacey, 2009), the session draws from a research study that explored and documented four-year- old children’s emergent numeracy understandings. The goal of the study was to show how play influences and supports early numeracy development and to propose some pedagogical strategies.
A website was created based on the results of the study as a knowledge translation tool for parents and educators to watch children at play and learn from the analysis how they were using mathematical concepts. In this session, the website Counting on Play will be featured as the focal point for discussing this research, for exploring play-based numeracy learning activities, and for demonstrating how research findings can be shared in meaningful ways with parents and educators.
More information here.
