ASSIGNMENT: Language and literacy environments for infants and toddlers
The purpose of this assignment is to give you an opportunity to observe an early childhood setting for infants and toddlers with a focus on language and literacy development.
1. Find a long day care centre that caters for infants and toddlers. A letter that you can take with you when you approach the Director of a centre, explaining the assignment and asking permission for you to observe the environment for infants and toddlers for approximately three hours is available to download from the iLearn website. Please arrange a time with the Director to visit the infants'/toddlers' room in the centre.
2. While at the centre, observe all aspects of the environment. You will need to take notes, observations, and draw sketches and/or diagrams, to record as much relevant information as you can.
3. Provide a brief profile of the setting
4. DESCRIBE and ANALYSE the physical environment in terms of its potential to support the children's language and literacy learning (800-900 words).
Refer to all aspects including size, colour, lighting, layout, furnishings etc.
Consider the room from the perspective of an infant or toddler. What could he or she see, hear, smell, feel?
Be sure to explain how these observed features relate to oral language and literacy development.
5. DESCRIBE and ANALYSE the staff-child and child-child interactions in terms of their potential to support the children's language and literacy learning (800-900 words).
Consider the quality, frequency, content, non-verbal communication, etc.
Explain how these features can potentially promote children's oral language and literacy development.
You must justify your descriptions and analyses by referring to research articles.
PLEASE NOTE:
You must not do this assignment in a centre in which you currently work, or have worked in the past 2 years.
Please ensure you have a completed and signed Permission Slip from the Director of the centre. You must keep and, if requested by the Faculty's or University's Ethics
Committee, make this permission slip available.
Once the assignment is completed, you will send a letter to the Director of the centre, written by the Unit Convenor, thanking the Director for allowing you to visit and giving some general feedback on the experience. The feedback will be of a general nature only, with no identification of individuals or centres.