Early Childhood Development

Foundation Phase Wrap-around Guide to accompany the ACEMaths materials (Six units) (Wits, Johannesburg, South Africa) Adapted by Manono Mdluli.
At Wits University in 2009 an ACE in Foundation Phase mathematics was offered along-side many other ACE programmes initiated as a result of the departmental roll-out of bursaries for teachers to improve their qualifications. Manono Mdluli had heard about the ACEMaths materials and chose to use them for one of her modules. But she wrote a full wrap-around guide for the tutors who would lecture the course so that all classes (which had to run parallel) would use the ACEMaths materials in a similar way. This guide was written to focus the pedagogical input at the Foundation Phase level.

Mathematics for Primary School Teachers has been digitally published by Saide, with the Wits School of Education. It is a revised version of a course originally written for the Bureau for In-service Teacher Development (Bited) at the then Johannesburg College of Education (now Wits School of Education).

The course is for primary school teachers (Foundation and Intermediate Phase) and consists of six content units on the topics of geometry, numeration, operations, fractions, statistics and measurement. Though they do not cover the entire curriculum, the six units cover content from all five mathematics content areas represented in the curriculum.

This unit presents an analytical approach to the study of shapes, including the make-up of shapes, commonalities and differences between shapes and a notation for the naming of shapes.

Mathematics for Primary School Teachers has been digitally published by Saide, with the Wits School of Education. It is a revised version of a course originally written for the Bureau for In-service Teacher Development (Bited) at the then Johannesburg College of Education (now Wits School of Education).

The course is for primary school teachers (Foundation and Intermediate Phase) and consists of six content units on the topics of geometry, numeration, operations, fractions, statistics and measurement. Though they do not cover the entire curriculum, the six units cover content from all five mathematics content areas represented in the curriculum.

This unit is designed to give you some insight into a few specially chosen ancient numeration systems.

Mathematics for Primary School Teachers has been digitally published by Saide, with the Wits School of Education. It is a revised version of a course originally written for the Bureau for In-service Teacher Development (Bited) at the then Johannesburg College of Education (now Wits School of Education).

The course is for primary school teachers (Foundation and Intermediate Phase) and consists of six content units on the topics of geometry, numeration, operations, fractions, statistics and measurement. Though they do not cover the entire curriculum, the six units cover content from all five mathematics content areas represented in the curriculum.

In this very short introductory course on statistics, we will outline the most important terminology which is often used in statistics, we will look at ways of representing information and then we will look very simply at some statistical interpretations of given information.

Mathematics for Primary School Teachers has been digitally published by Saide, with the Wits School of Education. It is a revised version of a course originally written for the Bureau for In-service Teacher Development (Bited) at the then Johannesburg College of Education (now Wits School of Education).

The course is for primary school teachers (Foundation and Intermediate Phase) and consists of six content units on the topics of geometry, numeration, operations, fractions, statistics and measurement. Though they do not cover the entire curriculum, the six units cover content from all five mathematics content areas represented in the curriculum.

In the first section of this unit we will look at the conceptual groundwork needed for the topic of measurement. In the second part of the unit we will investigate some of the conservation tests for measurement concepts. These give us a way to establish whether or not a learner has understood a certain measurement concept.

• a progression of appropriate activities that introduce young learners to the basic mathematical understanding, knowledge and skills that they should develop during their early schooling;
• ideas and examples of interesting practice activities that will help learners consolidate and extend their understanding and skills;
• suggestions for suitable interventions, support and challenges to meet the needs of both struggling learners and learners who are ready to go ahead;
• ideas and examples of resources that educators can use to enrich and extend the activities at the end of each section, for each grade, you will find lists of possible resources you can use, and at the end of the document you will find a Resources section which includes examples of worksheets and of materials you can copy for distribution to your learners;
• a discussion of the approach to learning and teaching mathematics that we adopt in this programme.

This set of excerpts from a research article compares the ways in which two different preschools (or early learning centres) construct order through different arrangements of time and space.

A team of key players from BRIDGE’s National ECD Community of Practice (ECD CoP) and the National ECD Alliance (NECDA) met in dialogue to focus on key challenges facing the ECD sector, the specific strengths and challenges of each structure and the potential for collaboration.

Through the dialogue, participants identified and agreed on opportunities for strategic collaboration to further the agenda of civil society organisations working in ECD in South Africa.

In this video, Melissa King of BRIDGE, provides an update on the progress of the development of the ECD CoP’s ECD Quality Reflective Toolkit. The purpose reflection tool is to help practitioners (including care-givers, trainers and other stakeholders) think about quality in ECD and reflect on: “What is quality ECD provision in practice?”

If you are a lecturer responsible for supporting teacher development at the Foundation Phase (FP) level, this guide is for you. It explores fundamental principles of Early Childhood Education (ECE) practice, offering what we hope is a clear but critical explanation of what is called ‘Developmentally Appropriate Practice’ (DAP). This explanation is accompanied by a series of reflections which raise questions that you as a teacher educator might use to clarify your own thinking, in preparation for teaching and engaging with students. There are also suggested readings which can enrich and deepen your own as well as your students’ understandings of ECE practice. We also provide a number of student tasks which, together with the explanations and readings, we hope can help to make the concepts come alive for you and your students. The readings and activities are intended primarily for you to use with students in class, but you might find it helpful to go through them yourself beforehand.

This book is a play manual. It brings together play activities and ideas drawn from the exeriences of people working with children in South Africa. Part 1 describes children's right to play and looks at play rights in practice; Part 2 offers many play activities to try out; and Part 3 explores how we can enable ourselves to make play happen for and with children.

After studying this course you will have:

• been introduced to practical active teaching strategies to support early reading
• developed an understanding of some methods for teaching early reading
• thought about how to assess early reading and how to use the assessment results to inform your planning of early reading
• developed resources to support early reading
• developed your ICT skills.

This accredited journal publishes contributions from any field of education. While the emphasis is on empirical research, theoretical or methodological papers, review articles, short communications, book reviews and letters containing fair commentary on previously published articles will also be considered. Priority is given to articles that are relevant to Africa or that address cross-cultural topics, and to contributions addressing educational issues of social change and development.

The Journal of Education is an interdisciplinary publication of original research and writing on education. The journal aims to provide a forum for scholarly understanding of the field of education. A general focus of the journal is on curriculum. Curriculum is understood in a wide and interdisciplinary sense, encompassing curriculum theory, history, policy and development at all levels of the education system (e.g. schooling, adult education and training, higher education). Contributions that span the divide between theory and practice are particularly welcome. Although principally concerned with the social sciences, the journal encourages contributions from a wider field.