Drawing on sociocultural theorizing, this case study investigates and unpacks the qualities of scientific play during children’s inquiry-based science activities framed by imagination and play (i.e. Poetry Science). The data were gathered in Finnish preschool groups with children aged five to six years old (N= 31) over a five-week period. The data consist of video recordings, observational field notes, and artifacts, subjected to multimodal analysis. The results show that scientific play that manifested throughout young children’s inquiry process has the following four characteristics: (i) creating and maintaining an imaginary science situation, (ii) assigning new meanings to science objects and processes, (iii) combining imaginary situations and problem solving, and (iv) engaging in science talk in an imaginary situation. The study shows how imagination and play are important elements of children’s science inquiry, with implications for early science education.
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The theory and research described in this article is based on the Vygotskian approach to human development. As this theory suggests, the promotion of semiotic activity in children is essential for their cultural development. It is argued in this paper that the promotion of semiotic activity in young children within the context of their play activity is an important aspect of the improvement of early childhood education. In a small scale exploratory study we observed pupils of 4-6 year old playing together with a train set. During this play the children were encouraged to make a diagram of their railway track. By analysing their play activity and their schematisations, we tried to find out whether (and how) the promotion of semiotic activity would be possible without affecting the play character of the children’s activity.
Background. Perception of fiction is one of the types of children’s activities that allows solving problems of speech, social and communicative, cognitive, artistic and aesthetic development of the child. Reading fiction can be considered as an activity, as well as a special kind of cultural practice aimed at enriching children’s independent activities. The variety of tasks related to working with a book and options for solving them require studying the current state of organizing classes on the perception of fiction in kindergarten.
Objective. To identify modern features of organizing classes on the perception of fiction by preschoolers based on the materials of the competitions “Reading Bianki” for teachers of kindergartens in the Ivanovo region.
Sample. The study involved 143 teachers of preschool organizations in 15 municipal districts of the Ivanovo region. 116 works of participants in the regional competition were analyzed.
Methods. The analysis of video recordings of classes and the study of competition works were used as research methods.
Results. There is a general tendency to overload educational activities with game techniques and surprise moments, as well as a desire to replace the discussion of a literary work with its retelling, game and productive activities. It has been established that teachers are not always able to determine the values and meanings laid down by the author of the work and promote their understanding by children. Based on the analysis of the contestants’ materials, the main types of questions used in the discussion of a literary work are highlighted.
Conclusions. Among the features of competitive (open) classes, it is noted that in most cases, additional activities do not contribute to children’s understanding of the meaning of a literary work, but are aimed at memorizing it or are conditionally related to the theme of a fairy tale or story. It has been revealed that with a serious approach to preparing the external design of classes, teachers do not pay attention to the substantive side of organizing developmental communication with children, maintaining a dialogue and helping to discover the meaning of a literary work.
Relevance of the article. Studies aimed at studying the cognitive aspect of the development of language ability in preschoolers show that the center of the development of language ability is the semantic component that underlies the linguistic development of a preschool child, which includes not only expanding the vocabulary, but also educating children to pay attention to the content of the word, its semantics, enriching connections with other words, because in monologue speech, the meaning of a single word interacts with the semantics of the entire utterance. The formation of coherent monological speech is the central task of the speech development of a preschooler. The work on the meaning of the word, the expansion of the semantic field, the use of the associative principle of vocabulary assimilation, the formation of linguistic generalizations in the assimilation of the grammatical structure of speech develop in preschoolers the arbitrariness and awareness of speech, the ability to sel ect accurate and expressive means when constructing coherent utterances of different types. These provisions apply to mastering not only the native language, but also any other language.
The aim of the study. To summarize the results of research conducted for more than twenty years in the kindergarten No. 215 (then – the preschool department of school No. 324 in Moscow).
Progress of the study. The research conducted under the leadership of F.A. Sokhin, O.S. Ushakova, V.I. Yashina was aimed at developing the theory of language acquisition in preschool childhood, organically combining pedagogical, psychological and linguistic aspects in theoretical analysis and experiment. These studies have shown that children, starting from the younger preschool age, show great interest in language reality, “experiment” with words, create new words, focusing on both the semantic and grammatical side of the language. A necessary condition for their linguistic development is a gradual awareness of linguistic phenomena, i.e. the development of children’s metalanguage activity, which leads to a genuine mastery of the richness of the language.
The research results also showed that enriching the dictionary includes not only expanding its scope, but also educating children to pay attention to the content of the word, its semantics, clarifying the meanings of words, expanding the connections of the word with other words. Along with the semantic side of the word, the problem of lexical compatibility of words also plays an important role, which makes it possible to close the mastery of the semantics of the word with the development of coherent speech.
Conclusions. The formation of elementary awareness of the phenomena of language and speech is one of the most important tasks of both speech and linguistic development, starting fr om preschool age, therefore, we consider this aspect to be central in the initial development of a linguistic personality and understanding the meaning of a word, which is the basic unit of language and the basis of a child’s cognitive development, determines the essence of the development of his language ability.