|
© Copyright M. Worthington & E. Carruthers 2010 |
May 10 | Apr 10 | Mar 10 |
Feb 10 |
Dec 09 |
Nov 09 |
Oct 09 |
Sept 09
|
May
2010 |
|
James is
a young four-year old and in his first term at
school. Registers have personal meaning to young
children as they think about their peers and
identify each, enacting the teacher’s role. At
nursery and school writing ‘registers’ is often a
preoccupation in children’s play.
In this instance James has used a range
of letter-like signs, written from left to right. He understands
that writing in our alphabetic script uses different letters and has
thought about some of their features. He also includes short
zigzags, perhaps encoding his sense of the appearance of cursive
‘writing’, or capturing the movement of an adult’s hand as she
writes, |
James - 'Seeing who's
here'

Imagination and
symbolic play: making meaning with marks for
writing
|
|
|
April 2010 |
|
Melanie’s 'ladybird'
 |
Transforming signs
and meanings
Melanie made marks on a
piece of paper - then taking some scissors, made
cuts at the bottom at the top and removed portions
of paper. She lifted the paper and moving it across
the table called happily to the other children
‘She’s dancing!’ Adding more marks she explained
‘She’s got a pretty dress’ and then explained that
this was ‘A lady dancing’.
By the next day Melanie
had altered what she had done, making several cuts
across the paper. Now she explained that it was a
‘ladybird’. Her teacher thought that the change of
meaning to ‘ladybird’ might have been through
word-association.
Referring to children
cutting out something they have drawn, Kress
explains the ‘makers’ shifting interest… while it is
on the page I can do “mental things” with it… when
it is off the page I can do physical things with
it,’ (1997: 27). Melanie explored her ideas about a
‘lady’ and ‘ladybird’ ‘multi-modally’, with the help
of paper, crayons and scissors, enabling her to
express and communicate personal meanings.
|
|
|
March 2010 |
|
Megan: “A very
big fast roller coaster!”
Megan is in the reception class (the
first year of school in England). This was the first of three
drawings Megan drew at home about fairground rides, including a
Ferris wheel and ‘a runaway train’.
Megan’s drawing suggests the route the
roller coaster took, its undulating and rapid movement and shows its
many seats. Megan told her mum ‘This is a very big fast roller
coaster!’ Her mother explained ‘Megan was thinking about how much
she’d love to go to a funfair again’.
Megan recalled some of the different
rides with excitement and used the drawings as a means of persuading
her family that they should take her again.
Communicating meanings through
graphicacy
Children use their graphics for a wide range of communicative
purposes, to sometimes face and explore anxieties and to feel in
control or to develop, negotiate and justify their sense of
belonging (in their family and peer group).
|

They reveal how new
media, technologies and popular culture exert
influence on both their feelings and their
representations and – as in Megan’s example – they
show how children also use their graphics to
persuade.
|
|
|
February 2010 |
|
Max
(Nursery)– ‘Yoda’s house

|
Max drew on his personal interest of the ‘Star Wars’
films in his representation of ‘Yoda’s house’.
Although he didn’t give any explain for the details
he had drawn, his drawing suggests a plan or a map,
with various featured identified by their location
on the page and their relationship with each other.
The outer green circle suggests that Max was
thinking about the inside of Yoda’s house,
and the different arrangements and shapes (of lines
and other abstract symbols) suggest that he used
them to convey very specific meaning).
Max included an arrow pointing inwards (lower
right). Our research has shown that arrows play a
distinct role in children’s own early calculations.
see:
-
Carruthers, E. and Worthington, M. (2008)
'Children's mathematical graphics: young
children calculating for meaning' in I.
Thompson, (Ed.) (2008) Teaching and Learning
Early Number, Maidenhead: Open University
Press, (2nd ed.).
|
|
|
December 2009 |
|
Daniel's Sign
'Shop Closed'
In the nursery, Daniel had been playing
shops and decided to make a sign to show when the shop was ‘open’
and another to show that it was ‘closed’. His teacher had noticed
what he was doing and Daniel explained:
Daniel: It’s closed now, the café is
closed
Adult: How do I know it’s closed?
Daniel: Look here, see? Closed, that means it’s closed.
Daniel pointed to his drawing of face
crossed out on chalk board and rubbing it out he drew a smiling face
without a cross:
Daniel: Look! Open that means its
open now... Oh dear...
Drawing a cross over his drawing of a
face he explained 'it’s closed'.
|

Young children use
crosses in a variety of contexts to signify
different meanings in drawings: they also use them
to stand for writing. This flexibility of sign-use
is highly significant in supporting children as
their understanding of the abstract written language
of mathematics evolves. |
|
|
November 2009 |
|
Nathan's 'Writing'

See also:
Aman’s boat |
Children sometimes also
use a particular symbol to mean one thing in one
context, and then use it to mean something different
in another context. For example, on one side of his
paper (not shown) Nathan drew a horizontal line with
zigzags as his ‘birthday cake’ (his mum made a
‘caterpillar’-shaped birthday cake for his 4th
birthday). Turning his paper over, he repeated the
same lines and zigzags (figure 4) now referring to
them as ‘writing’.
Other children may use
zigzags to signify fierce animals (e.g. crocodiles,
monsters); lightening; water or stairs. They are
generalising about a graphical sign and also
understand that they can be used flexibly. You may
like to look out for lines, crosses and other
symbols in children’s graphics (e.g. drawing,
writing, maps and mathematics).
For more examples,
see: Worthington. M. (2009) 'Fish in the water of
culture: signs and symbols in young children’s
drawing', Psychology of Education Review Volume 33,
Number 1, March 2009. |
|
|
October 2009 |
|
Felix
(4 years 1
month) used pens to make these busy marks. Afterwards he explained
it was ‘night-time’.
Young children
often attach their own meanings to their graphics after
noticing something in their marks and representations.
The pedagogical
feature that appears to contribute most to imaginative, symbolic
play (and to their understanding of symbolic marks and
representations) is adults’ interest in children’s meanings
(Worthington, 2009, paper submitted for PhD) –
unpublished. |
 |
|
|
September 2009 |
 |
Aman
(4 years 3 months) was playing outside near the
sandpit. She found a twig and began scratching in
the sand that had spilt on the ground,
drawing what she described as ‘boats’. She completed
the top of each ‘boat’ with a wavy line explaining
this was ‘water’.
By combining the curved line of the boat’s hull with
the wavy (or zigzag) line it appeared that she was
communicating (in one sign) boat-on-water.
Children explore, make,
think about, encode, transform and communicate
meanings through their own marks and signs in
flexible ways. This helps them understand that signs
can be used to carry different meanings (in
different contexts and for different purposes) -
including mathematics.
In the following
months we will provide further examples of
children's graphicacy.
Graphicacy |
|