Task 2d Inquiry Task

Having completed the tasks in part 2 many thoughts and ideas have surfaced which relate to my professional practice and intrigue me to develop further. Within my journal writing and critical reflection task, I've noticed ideas that link my singing teaching and early years teaching assistant work together e.g. teaching phonics. Below are some questions that I've been playing with;

"What relevance does singing have on early years development?"

 

"Do reception aged children benefit from singing games/rhymes?"

 

Answers I got from my own personal experience relating to these questions are;

• Singing helps children to be able to count in sequence.
• Nursery rhymes help language development.
• Break language barriers for non English speaking children, give them confidence to join in.
• Help social interaction between children.
• Encourage learning sounds phonetically.
• Bring fun and enjoyment to learning.
• Assist numeracy and literacy learning activities.

This led me on to think about actions and learning;

 

"Do children benefit from physical actions and sounds to help their learning?"

 

 

I use actions when teaching phonics to help children remember the letter and its sound e.g. 'm' we use 'Maisie, Mountain, Mountain' and get pupils to repeat the words and sound writing the letter with their finger to help their learning and memory ability.

 







 

(Read, Write, Ink Phonic Sounds. Author Ruth Miskin, Published by Oxford University Press.)

 

 

Having a visual aid, sound and action encourages learning, giving children an opportunity to learn through concrete experiences (action-in-action). This aspect of visual aids got me thinking about how often within the classroom setting we use visual aids e.g. timetables, behavioural charts etc. This posed the question;

 

"Do visual aids help children's development and learning?"

 

 

Using my own experiences from working with early years and SEN (Special Educational Needs) children visual aids are very important to assist a childs learning to access the curriculum.  It can be used as a method of communication e.g. when working within an ARP unit (Additionally Resourced Provision unit), the children who had autism used PECS (Picture Exchange Communication System). This allowed the pupil's to communicate through imagery and gave them a voice. 



 

 

Source: www.littlecottonrabbits.co.uk

 

 

Teaching children singing and running an afterschool 'Glee Club' I use lots of music and movement within my lesson plans. Also running an Attention, Balance and Co-ordination group last year with SEN children I discovered benefits from using music and movement to encourage improvement on gross and fine motor skills. This thought process brought me to the question;

 

"Do children, especially SEN children gain from music and movement focused activities?" 

 

 

With this idea you can include musical instruments, dance, movement, ribbon dancing etc.

 

Please comment and raise ideas about how I can improve or develop these questions for my professional practice. Does anyone have any similar experiences working with children? Do you use music or visual aids to assist your professional practice?