Language education at Thrive

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Research on Language Development in the Early Years

Research makes evident language development begins at the early age of 4 months old. However, unborn babies will also begin to hear and recognise sounds around 18 weeks of pregnancy. This exciting time of development first starts with baby recognising sound, and more specifically the sound of the mother’s voice. Babies become attuned and attached to this reoccurring sound, as it stimulates neurological indicators in the baby’s brain. From this moment, the baby begins to deconstruct the process of communicative language.

As outlined in the Thrive philosophical approach to education, Vygotsky’s theoretical perspective is key to the pedagogical approaches of supporting language development. Aligning with our emphasises on language in the early years, Lev Vygotsky coined the importance of language development as the foundational way for children to acquire knowledge, building on their cognition and conveying their knowledge to others. This process involves all of Vygotsky’s key concepts, including the more knowledgeable other and scaffolding.

Although language does develop naturally, research encourages opportunities for children to explore language processes and concepts, as this assists them later on to develop strong foundations in reading and writing.

Further to Thrive’s philosophical approach, we believe oral language has an overall impact on learning, specifically in the development of social skills and cognition. Therefore, nurturing oral development is essential for our educators within their pedagogical practices and planning of the curriculum.

How does Listening Skills contribute?

Communication is broken down into two processes: Expressive and Receptive. Both are essential in the development of language. Expressive communication is when an individual speaks orally, conveying meaning. Receptive communication is the ability to listen and internalise what others are saying to comprehend the information.

Children must have opportunities to listen to sound through language so they can begin to deconstruct vocabulary and sentences. Collectively, combined with opportunities to explore print, this process also contributes to early literacy.

Thrive’s Approach to Language in the Early Years

Now let’s talk about how Thrive uses this important information in the development and facilitation of the curriculum.

Thrive ensures each weekly curriculum has language experiences planned, stemming from children’s interests and developmental capabilities. Through this planning our skilful educators purposefully outline strategies to facilitating these experiences, making sure language is not just seen as “singing or story book reading” .

Rather, we place an emphasis on using the developmental milestones, and EYLF outcomes to ensure language learning is occurring throughout the day in both child-led and teacher-led experiences.

These examples can be seen through:

  • Dramatic play
  • Spelling bee puzzle
  • Small group games
  • Puppet play
  • Story telling & show and tell

Childcare Sydney

Like many of the key areas of child development, Thrive prides itself on applying a unique approach to language education. In ensuring children not only gain from language in English, Thrive embeds a cultural approach to language development by facilitating the ELLA program, involving the integrated use of our interactive whiteboards as teaching tools. Within the ELLA program children apply creativity and imagination as they create their own avatars and complete tasks within the program. Using the ELLA program allows both our educators and children to learn languages together.

Additionally, our Thrive services have a French teacher from the company Bonjour babies attend our services each week for a planned language learning program. Our connection with Bonjour babies has been reoccurring for many years, and we are proud to say we have most certainly seen the benefits it has with children, families and educators. The fluent French teachers use a range of teaching strategies and resources to support everyone involved in learning and remembering French. Our service invites all enrolled families to be part of this special class by participating and using the resources to encourage continuous learning at home.

Creative Arts in the Early Years

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Art is more than just painting or drawing.

Rather, what we want to talk about today is creative arts! Creative arts involve music, dance, drama, media arts, and storytelling. It is important for children to have opportunities in these subject areas both separately and interchangeably. Through art, children create meaning, hence why there are many forms of creative arts opposed to printed art.

When we use the word CREATIVE, we want you to think through your imagination. That’s how we portray it in regard to children’s learning. Creative arts engage children’s imagination in a vast variety of ways. It is open-ended which allows children to learn through a product-driven style of learning in their own time.

Benefits to Child Development

The benefits children receive from engaging in creative arts is far beyond what you can imagine. Targeting all developmental domains through the key areas outlined.

Developmental Subsequent Development
Emotional
  • Cooperative play, Solitary play & Parallel play
  • Resilience & persistence
Social
  • Self-expressions & emotional regulation
  • Understanding of inclusion & exclusion
  • Cultural awareness & cultural competence
Physical
  • Fine & Gross motor
  • Balance & coordination
  • Fundamental movement skills
  • Complex movement skills
Cognitive
  • Creativity & imagination
  • Representation & memory recall
Language
  • Expressive & Receptive
  • Oral & written

 

Creative arts holistically contribute to the three core elements of the Early Years Learning Framework; Being, Belonging and Becoming. Creative arts encourage children to explore who they are, where they belong and who they want to be (DEWWR, 2009).

Creative Arts within Thrive Early Learning Centres

Aligning with Thrive’s philosophical beliefs from theorist Lev Vygotsky, creative arts play enables children to learn new things through play in social settings, using their current cultural understanding to recognise what they presently know and using the perspectives of others to build on their perceptions. These social interactions are core to children’s cognitive progression, as children engage in what is known as ‘peer scaffolding’. Peer scaffolding occurs regularly within our Thrive services, using creative arts children are encouraged to express and convey their ideas and views, allowing others to build on their existing knowledge base (Raban & Nolan, 2015).

For example, if a child knows the dance moves to a particular song, a secondary child can watch and/or listen to their instruction to learn the moves also. This is consistent across all the art forms.

To ensure our curriculum reflects a dynamic array of creative arts, when we evaluate and plan our weekly curriculum we ensure each discipline within the arts is included in the curriculum ensuring it is child-focused.

Recently, our Thrive children have shown a big interest in

-Dress up play

-Shop dramatic play

-Musical instruments

-Ribbon dancing

-Cultural music dance and song

-Photography – we call this ‘through the eyes of the child’

-Puppet play

References

Chen, S. (2016) The Importance of Creative Arts in Early Childhood Education.

https://novakdjokovicfoundation.org/importance-creative-arts-ece/

Dinham, J., & Chalk, B. (2017). It’s arts play : Young children belonging, being and

becoming through the arts. Oxford University Press.

DEWWR. (2009). BELONGING, BEING & BECOMING The Early Years Learning

Framework for Australia.

https://www.acecqa.gov.au/sites/default/files/2018-02/belonging_being_and_bec

oming_the_early_years_learning_framework_for_australia.pdf