Unit 3.6 Ac 4.1

[Gemma30]

Can anyone help please Brian really not getting round this question. Analyse reasons for valuing individual interests when supporting children's emergent mathematical development. Any help would be great. Falling to behind with my units now.

[Ruthierhyme]

Hi, valuing children's interests is a strategy that supports their learning and development, children's individual interests enable practitioners to plan activities that have a high liklihood of a child taking part.

Page 245 /6 of this level 3 handbook will help you to analyse this by exploring how individual interests makes maths meaningful to a child, builds their self confidence, encourages them to talk about mathematics, develop their own ideas and to extend them (Sustained shared thinking > Supporting children to solve problems and to apply new learning to their mathematical development)

AC 4.1 Scaffolding children's mathmatical development

AC 4.2 Valuing individual interests when supporting children's emergent mathematical development

Children will come to the setting with their own individual interests and ideas, some of which will be related to maths. This starting point is a very powerful one for providing opportunities for mathematical activitries. You should always value what children have to say, whatever their iunterests, and encourage them through talking or allowing them to talk to their peers about them, for the following reasons

The book then goes on to explore how valuing individual interests helps to

• Retain their enthusiasm
• Develop their curiosity
• Increase their confidence
• To give them opportunities to extend their learning

Hope this helps xx

[Gemma30]

Thanks for the reply I have the book still cant get my head around it. But thanks for taking time to reply

[MrsC81]

Ruths reply is awesome (as always) but I wanted to add that with that think of how maybe a child who loves dinosaurs would likely to be more engaged in a maths based activity if it involved them somehow.
As an example, for a measuring activity..... Adult would like child to order something in size, child is not engaging with the activity of how many cubes in length the leaf is. Knowing the child's interest in dinosaurs the adult swapped the leaves for different sized dinosaurs now making the activity more appealing, opening a discussion (promoting communication skills, vocabulary and shared thinking) about triceratops being longer than the tyrannosaurus with the child, how could they find out, can they measure them with cubes?
I hope that is of some help.